


Someone's Going To Love Me

by rilla



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, past zigi, some mentions of anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 22:36:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15277671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: It's the end of their second year of university, and Harry gets roped into being Zayn's date at a family wedding. WILL THEY FALL IN LOVE? Who can say.





	Someone's Going To Love Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veryniceandgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryniceandgood/gifts).



> This fic is a long time coming - I'm so sorry it took a while. It's for [fandomtrumpshate](https://fandomtrumpshate.tumblr.com/) and in aid of Planned Parenthood, and - even more importantly - for my sweet friend Fina, otherwise known as [veryniceandgood](http://veryniceandgood.tumblr.com/). She's hilarious, generous and kind, and I'm so glad that I know her - thank you so much for donating to an amazing cause and for putting your faith in me to write this fic. I hope you like it bb. And the title is taken from an amazing George Michael song! He gets mentioned a lot in this. I don't know why. Don't judge me.

Zayn is sitting on the sofa, looking woebegone. The first time that happened, Harry was as supportive as possible, considering that Zayn is not strictly speaking his friend: rather, he’s one of Niall’s people, picked up from one of the five million societies that Niall is part of. These include cheese and chocolate, ice-skating, Harry Potter, and breakdancing, although so far Harry has not seen him spin on his head in the middle of the living room, so he has dark suspicions that Niall doesn’t have time to go to all the meetings. Zayn is from the music technology club. As far as Harry can tell, they get together once every fortnight to sit in a darkened room and play with the different sound effects on a keyboard. Niall has said that Zayn is an incredible singer but so far Harry has mostly just heard him grunt monosyllabically so he doesn’t have any personal views on the subject.

“Y’all right?” Harry asks, and Zayn nods a bit and mumbles something vague about waiting for Niall, which makes Harry laugh because although Niall insists he’s never late, he often is. He’s the tidiest out of all of the housemates but that means that sometimes he tidies things away too carefully. Then he can’t find them so he has to spend half an hour rampaging around and shouting at everyone until they’ve suggested at least three different places in which he might have put his bus pass safely away. He can hear Niall above them thumping around and making noises that sound a lot like inventive swearing. He sends a fond smile at the ceiling and says, “Do you want some tea?” to Zayn.

“Nah, I’m all right, thanks. We’re supposed to be going to the cinema.” Zayn rolls his eyes in a way that probably means that unless Niall gets a wiggle on they’re going to be late.

“What are you seeing?”

“Black Panther.”

“Again?” Harry asks dubiously.

“Again,” Zayn says in a tone that means he’s taking no shit.

“Lovely,” Harry says, entirely not meaning it.

“Niall said you saw God’s Own Country eight times,” Zayn says.

“Niall talks shit,” Harry says. He saw it five times, but he doesn’t see how that’s the point.

“He does,” Zayn agrees affectionately. He’s starting to look a bit more cheerful now, which is a relief. Harry knows that you can’t be happy all the time but since Zayn split up with his girlfriend he has been acting like a particularly wet weekend. Harry knows that it must be tricky to go out with the prettiest girl on campus for eight months and then get dumped so she can move back to New York, but once Harry accidentally got locked out and had to climb up the trellis and flopped in through Louis’s open bedroom window and onto his bed just as he and Eleanor were trying out anal for the first time, so honestly everyone’s got problems. “So…” Zayn’s starting to look mildly uncomfortable.

“So,” Harry agrees. He’s usually good at making conversation but there’s something about Zayn that makes him feel as if he’s about to swallow his tongue. He’s not the biggest lad in the world but he’s got a sort of presence to him that’s disconcerting, a gravitas that’s half magnetic and half slightly frightening. Harry flicks a smile at him and tries to look like a normal person. “How’s it going anyway?”

Zayn blows out a breath. “You mean with the Gigi thing?”

“Well.” Harry did mean the Gigi thing, because although Zayn has always been quiet he’s been especially withdrawn since she left. Still, if Zayn decides to talk about something less awkward like Jeremy Corbyn being the ultimate lad or how excellent Harry’s Kylie Minogue t-shirt is or where the smell of mould in the kitchen is coming from (especially if he can offer solutions because even Liam is stumped), Harry will be ultimately more into it. “Sort of.”

“It’s all right,” Zayn says, thank God. “I’m all right.”

Harry frowns at him. There’s something quiet and bleak in his eyes that doesn’t look particularly all right at all, but Harry doesn’t really want to go into it and he suspects that Zayn doesn’t either. “Good,” he says firmly.

“My cousin’s getting married soon,” Zayn says. “My older cousin, Nina. I’ve got a lot of cousins.”

“I didn’t know that.” Harry’s always sort of assumed that Zayn sprang into the world fully formed, like Aphrodite rising from her shell.

“Tons of cousins. And three sisters,” Zayn says, and grins when Harry raises his eyebrows. “I know. One older and two younger. Anyway, Gi was going to come with me, but obviously she’s gone so she’s not coming now, and my mum’s like…” He sighs, and bites his lip, and trails off. The topic seems to be closed and Harry turns away again because God knows he’s not the sort of person who’s good at pulling words out of recalcitrant mouths. He can do polite small talk with his mum’s friends and he can do late night drunken chats outside chip shops and he can do witty faux philosophy with post-grads who think they’re miles cleverer than him even though they aren’t, but deep stuff with people who may or may not like him is beyond him. There’s a pause that’s slightly less awkward than it usually is between them, and then Zayn says, “Mums worry, don’t they?”

That, Harry can identify with. He finishes making his cup of tea and smiles sympathetically and says, “They do.”

Zayn holds his gaze for a moment, his mouth tilting up at the corner in a bit of a smile, and it’s then that Niall crashes down the stairs and says “What are you doing? We’re going to be late!” to Zayn, who starts making high-pitched defensive noises. As Harry turns away he can’t help but laugh.

*

Zayn comes along when they all go out two days later on Saturday night. Strictly speaking, exams aren’t over so they should be at home doing revision, but as Louis said with utter confidence, “It doesn’t matter if we all fail our second year because we can make up for it by getting extremely high Firsts in third year.” In hindsight, as Harry accidentally puts his elbow in a sticky circle of something unidentifiable on the bar, that was faulty reasoning, but he’s out now and he has had several drinks including two Jagerbombs, which means there’s no going back. He only has two more exams anyway: contract law on Tuesday and human rights on Thursday, and he’s done plenty of work steadily all year so even though he still wants to die at the prospect of actually being a lawyer, he won’t fail. Louis has a sort of too-bright frenetic energy about him that means he might not be so lucky and he knows it, but that’s his problem, and probably Eleanor’s too: she grimly made revision cards and dragged Louis through first year so Harry thinks she’ll probably manage it this year as well.

Somehow over the last year, everyone has paired off. Louis and Eleanor have been together since they first clapped eyes on each other at the start of first year, and Harry’s used to that, they’ve been together as long as he’s known them. But Liam and Sophia got together about six months ago and since then Liam has spent increasing amounts of time at her house, ingratiating himself with her housemates, all of whom are shiny and glossy and have flicky hair. They’re pretty and nice and clever and funny, and they all smell much better than anyone in Harry, Louis, Liam and Niall’s house, but Harry still resents them for being Liam’s new preferred group. Niall and Hailee aren’t quite official but she’s been around a lot, and from what Harry can tell, she makes Niall laugh more than pretty much anyone else in the world. Harry wants his friends to be happy but sometimes he’d rather they were happy with him than with other people.

There’s a circle of them out tonight, the eight of them, and that’s one circle of intimacy: but within it there are the three couples and, on either end, Harry and Zayn. Music is pounding around them and they’re all attempting to dance. Liam’s got the most rhythm out of them all, and Louis’s sheer confidence makes up for whatever grace he lacks, and Niall’s mostly bouncing up and down. At the other side of their little circle Zayn’s all awkward angles, eyes on the floor as he shifts from foot to foot. He doesn’t look as if he’ll ever be drunk enough to dance for real. Harry wonders for a moment if he danced with his ex-girlfriend: Gigi was taller than him and more beautiful than anyone and they made a strikingly gorgeous couple but Harry can’t imagine them together like this, the way that Louis and Eleanor are, Eleanor turning her face to Louis’s and laughing against his cheek.

There’s a sort of restlessness clawing inside Harry’s chest. He turns to Niall and grabs his hips and makes him sway in rhythm and Niall laughs as he goes with it the way he always does, tipping his head back and flinging an arm around Harry’s neck and slinging his knee up on Harry’s hip as Harry tries and fails to dip him. Hailee’s laughing too and so is Liam as Sophia breaks off from him and comes over to Hailee. She takes her hands and twirls under her arm and Hailee moves with her so easily that it looks like they rehearsed it. Niall is a sweaty weight on Harry’s side before Louis rips him away to do something that looks a lot like a terrible tango. Liam stamps a foot and arches an arm like he’s a flamenco dancer and Harry’s weak with laughter even though he knows it isn’t actually funny and they’re getting odd irritable looks from other people. It’s because it’s them, because they’re his, because it’s the summer and exams are almost over, because he loves them, and because being this carefree won’t last forever but right now he feels as though it might.

Eleanor slings an arm over his shoulder and makes him dance the jitterbug with her. “I’m going to slide between your legs!” she shouts enthusiastically in his ear, and then gets stuck in something sticky on the floor and becomes abruptly hysterical. It’s as he’s helping her up that Harry notices that Zayn is gone, and he doesn’t know how long for. He’s never been part of their group, he’s always been on the fringes, always had his own life and his own friends, hasn’t ever lived with them, not in halls in first year and not in their shared house now. Harry doesn’t know much about his life, other than the small details he’s offered when Niall has invited him over. He has a tattoo of a tiger on his arm. He’s from Bradford. He loves reggae, and he can beat the rest of them no matter which video game they’re playing. And right now, he’s gone.

Harry twists away from the others and when he looks back over his shoulder for just one second they’ve merged together in a group of six: they don’t even seem to have noticed that he’s no longer there. It stings and he blinks at them before making his way out the back to the smoking terrace. There are two girls having a drunk and emotional conversation about someone’s boyfriend being a terrible arsehole, and a bloke trying and failing to order a taxi, and at the end of the terrace there’s Zayn, a cigarette glowing in one hand and his phone glowing in the other. Even though it’s summer it isn’t particularly warm outside; there’s rain in the air and Zayn’s arms are held close to his side like he’s trying to conserve his body heat. He’s got a lot of tattoos but the inside curve of his left elbow is bare and his skin looks creamy smooth, like if Harry touched it, it would feel good beneath his fingertips.

He doesn’t touch it. Instead he just says, “Hey,” and Zayn looks up from his phone. His face is slightly pinched and not entirely happy but he smiles anyway, although it looks tired. “Y’all right?” he says.

“Yeah,” Harry says. He stands upwind of the cigarette but Zayn’s holding it carefully away from him anyway. “Did you get bored?”

“Kind of,” Zayn says, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Did you?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, which is a surprise because he didn’t quite realise it and yet it’s the truth. “There’s only so long you can look at happy couples without wanting to flush them all down the toilet.”

Zayn stares at him for a moment and then he huffs out a little laugh. “Did you think that about me and Gigi?”

“No,” Harry says. “But only because I didn’t really hang out with you.”

“Charming.”

“Aren’t I?” Harry gives him his best smile.

Zayn blinks and looks down at his cigarette. “No.”

If Zayn is being honest and not just giving Harry shit, he’s probably one of the only people in the world who thinks that. Admittedly, one of Harry’s bigger flaws is that his ego is fairly – and mostly deservedly – large, but he’s always been good at wrapping people around his little finger. It’s a fun talent to have, the ability to smile like he means it, but at the same time it sometimes makes him feel false and as though he’s managed to manipulate people into liking him. He supposes it’s better than not being liked at all.

“So.” Zayn glances at him again. “What’s up?”

“Nothing really.” Harry stretches his arms out in front of himself and admires his tattoos. He’s got good arms and he sees Zayn look at them as well, eyes quickly darting over. “I just felt like…”

“Excluded?” Zayn’s lips twist slightly. “Yeah.”

“Is that how you felt?” Harry says.

“I don’t know. Yeah. Well, not really. I felt like…” Zayn frowns, which Harry likes: he gives him space to work out what to say, waiting still and quiet beside him until Zayn says, “Dancing there, it was making me… I was thinking about this fucking wedding I’ve got to go to. Like, I’m just – I’m so tired thinking about it. My mum was so… God.”

“So what?” Harry asks.

“Well, it’s – it’s all so complicated. Gigi was going to come with me, right? She met my family a few times and they got on really well. But then she went back to America early.”

“Why?”

Zayn shrugs. “Family stuff. And she just missed it there, and she missed them, and also her year here didn’t count so she didn’t have to do the end of year exams. She was essentially just waiting around while everyone else revised so I think she thought it wasn’t really worthwhile. And me and her were, like – I mean, we were happy, but…”

“Not happy enough?”

“Not happy enough,” Zayn confirms, looking relieved to have the words given to him. Then he looks sharply at Harry. “Why are you asking me loads of questions?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says. He really doesn’t: he’s usually more interested in himself than in other people. Sometimes when he’s having a conversation, he’s so busy thinking about what marvellous thing he’s going to come out with next that he misses vast swathes of what the other person is saying. He frowns and puzzles it out, and then says, “Sometimes I like to escape outside too.”

Zayn nods slowly, like he gets it. “Yeah. I think I just felt like – this is what it’s going to be like at that fucking wedding. Just being there by myself like some awkward lemon.”

“I spend my life being an awkward lemon,” Harry says.

“No one can tell, though.” Zayn’s eyes search his face. “You seem happy. Aren’t you happy?”

“How do you know when you’re happy?” Harry says.

“I don’t know.” Zayn shakes his head and looks at the ground. Then he looks up, sharp and sudden, and laughs. “This got really deep and depressing. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Harry says, and smiles at him. “Listen – this wedding. Do you want some company?”

Zayn wrinkles his nose at him. “What?”

Harry’s already half-regretting the offer but it’s out there now so he can’t take it back or laugh it off. And Zayn looks lighter now: his eyes are bright with sharp interest and he seems less weighed down. “I can come with you,” Harry says. “I love a good wedding. And if your ex was supposed to be there with you, I assume there’s going to be a spare place?”

“Yeah, I guess so. God.” Zayn blows out a breath, wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Is it going to be a fun wedding?” Harry asks. He loves a good wedding, even if he doesn’t know the bride and groom particularly well. He loves the celebration and the happiness in the air and the joy that everyone feels. The idea of committing yourself so completely to someone else is unfathomable but there’s no reason that should get in the way of a good party. The idea of going to a wedding with Zayn isn’t so bad, now he thinks about it. Maybe they can make friends for real: that would make Niall happy. There might be a conga line, and jumping up and down to Livin’ On A Prayer, and speeches that will make him tear up even though he doesn’t know the people involved.

Zayn smiles a bit and says, “More fun if you’re coming.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Harry feels himself go red, which is ridiculous: he rarely blushes. But he’s been drinking and Zayn’s eyes are very intent on his face. Then Zayn stubs his cigarette out and says “Come on, Styles,” and they go back inside.

*

Harry’s got a car, which means he can drive them over to Bradford, although it also means that he has to put up with listening to Louis whining about having to deal with a weekend in which Harry isn’t available to be everyone’s chauffeur. In all honesty, the only time he’s ever driven them around is when they went to the big Ikea at the start of term: they bought a TV table which broke after a week, and then they had a two-hour break to eat meatballs, and then they had to wait for half an hour outside the toilets because the meatballs gave Louis the shits, and then Harry accidentally drove three times around a roundabout on the way home because Liam kept talking over Google Maps, and then Niall lost his temper and told the rest of them that they were useless. 

This car journey is vastly preferable to that. Harry puts on a playlist of soul classics that makes a contented expression spread over Zayn’s face, and outside the sky is bright and blue and clear. It’s a Friday morning and they both did their last exams the previous day: Zayn’s was on Romantic poets and so Harry asks him what he wrote about because he likes poetry too. Part of him wishes that he’d decided to study it. Zayn is hesitant at first but then he talks about Wordsworth and Coleridge and about how he thought that Romantic poetry was a load of nonsense initially, a load of shit dreamt up by old white men--

“And it isn’t?” Harry asks.

“No, it absolutely is,” Zayn says, and they both laugh before Zayn continues, “But what Wordsworth said is that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and I like that.”

“Me too,” Harry agrees.

“You don’t…” Zayn says, and pauses. Harry can sense him choosing his words carefully. “You don’t seem like the sort of person who lets your feelings overflow spontaneously.”

“Neither do you,” Harry says. He isn’t insulted: he likes to keep things buttoned up, likes to slam a polite smile on top of whatever he’s feeling. He isn’t sure why. It seems more polite and perhaps easier for other people to deal with. He doesn’t know where that stems from. His parents, maybe: it probably comes from when his dad left and his mum was devastated more by the loss of her perfect family than the loss of his dad himself, and Gemma was a snarling, tearful mess, and it was his job to cheer them up and to say funny things and to sing songs and pretend to fall over to make them laugh. His friends too – he’s always liked to be a peacemaker. When Louis loses his rag, when Liam gets stressed and has a meltdown, when Niall has a panic attack. Harry likes to be that soothing presence. Zayn doesn’t seem to be soothing exactly, but he does seem to be quiet. Harry thinks of himself as a calm lake with waves underneath its surface, but Zayn’s more like the ocean on a cloudy day: unpredictable currents, and no real stillness. That’s exciting, though. Harry has always loved stormy skies. He amends himself: “Maybe it’s that I’ve never heard you talk much about the way that you feel. Like with Gigi – I knew you were upset because you looked really mopey, but you never actually talked much about it. It was more like Niall saying, oh, Zayn’s having a rough time, he’s coming over, be nice to him.”

“Niall told you to be nice to me?” Zayn sounds affectionate. “I love Niall.”

“Niall’s the best,” Harry agrees. Loving Niall is a good thing to have in common with someone. It definitely means that Zayn has good taste. “Are you still having a rough time?”

“I don’t really know,” Zayn says. “I mean, me and Gigi still Whatsapp sometimes, and I always knew it was never going to work out with her. I think it’s just that I miss having a person. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of,” Harry says. “Don’t you think you need to learn to be comfortable by yourself?”

“I’ve been by myself,” Zayn says. “I like being in a relationship more.”

Harry thinks about it. “That’s fair.”

“Have you ever had a long term girlfriend?”

“Um, no,” Harry says. “I’ve had a few flings.” They were mostly older, although sometimes when he talks about them, people look at him with shocked eyes as though he was somehow taken advantage of, and he doesn’t like to think about that. He doesn’t feel like he was taken advantage of, although that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Maybe he’s scarred for life on a deeper level. Maybe it’s why his stomach starts to melt with fear every time he goes on more than one date with the same person, why he starts to feel as though he’s drowning every time actual feelings are mentioned. “I’m not very good with commitment,” he explains. “When I was younger, I had a thing with my best mate for about a year, but since then I’ve mostly just had a few flings here and there.”

“Are you still in touch with her?” Zayn asks.

“With him,” Harry says. He hopes that Zayn isn’t going to get weird about this. Louis didn’t give a shit and neither did Niall. Liam asked him a few questions and then he was totally all right too, but some straight boys can be such a pain about it, like the second they let their guard down Harry’s going to attempt to bum them, which he wouldn’t because he actually has taste. As he and Zayn are halfway to Bradford for a wedding and Harry’s sort of his date, this could get a bit awkward. “Kind of – we’re Facebook friends and we see each other down the pub a bit when I’m home.”

“Oh, right.” There’s a pause, and Harry tries to work out what sort of a pause it is: it could be an awkward gay panic pause, or it could be a gazing out the window and listening to Ella Fitzgerald pause. A second later Zayn demonstrates that it was neither of those pauses by saying, “I had one of those things with my old best friend too in secondary school. I think it’s when you’re working out who you are, you know? Like you realise you fancy other blokes so you sort of gravitate to the one that’s nearest you--”

Harry feels almost light-headed with relief. “And you do some sneaky blowjobs upstairs when your mum’s making you dinner--”

“And the whole time you’re thinking ‘oh my fuck, I hope my sister doesn’t walk in’.” There’s laughter in Zayn’s voice and it feels as though some sort of barrier has been broken down between them. “Are you gay then?” Zayn asks.

“Nah,” Harry says. “I’ve been with girls too. I don’t really like labels.”

“I know what you mean. I came out to my mum when I was about seventeen – I told her I was bi but whenever I tell people that I always get the feeling that--”

“They’re waiting for you to admit you’re actually gay?”

Zayn twists to look at him. “Right! For fuck’s sake.”

Harry grins sideways at him. “I hate that.”

“Me too.” Zayn shakes his head. “And your family was all right with it?”

“Yeah, totally. Although my mum worries about everything and I think she’s a bit scared it’ll make my life harder.”

Zayn exhales, more sombre now. “Yeah. And has it?”

That’s not a bad question. Harry thinks back: the sheer joy of kissing another boy for the first time and feeling as though it was right. Being fifteen and secretly getting the train by himself to go to Pride in Manchester, staring wide-eyed at the streets full of people who were proving, in action, that his life could be happy. Joining the LGBT society at university and being in a group of his people for the first time. He sometimes feels as though he’s separated from Louis and Niall and Liam, as though there’s a glass wall between them because they just can’t understand the way that he experiences the world, and although Manchester is a pretty cool and liberal place he hates that he sometimes feels a quiver of worry before he holds hands with another boy in the street. But being part of a community that has flourished and grown more beautiful in its defiance of the fact that society has pushed it to its fringes, that’s incredible. Being here, and queer, and proud: learning to love himself, learning to love the way that he feels and the way that he fucks and the way that he loves. “I think,” he says thoughtfully, “I think that it’s enhanced my life.”

“Me too,” Zayn says, quiet but certain. “I’ve got older relatives who find it hard to deal with but I’ve got a mum and dad and sisters and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins who’d go into battle to defend me. A while ago my mum told me that me coming out to her had made her feel like she was the kind of mum she’d always tried to be.”

“Oh,” Harry says, melting. It’s one of the sweetest things that he’s ever heard. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“She’s great. You’ll like her.”

“She won’t think it’s weird that some random mate of yours has turned up?”

“Nah.” Zayn shakes his head. “She might be disappointed you aren’t Griff, though.”

“Who’s Griff?”

“My flatmate. Very hot. Very straight.”

“Do you fancy him?” Harry’s stomach flips unpleasantly.

Zayn’s audibly frowning. “I mean – no. I don’t think so. Doesn’t mean that I hate seeing him walking around without his top on though. Do you fancy any of your housemates?”

“No,” Harry says with absolute certainty. “Liam’s got a nice six-pack and Louis’s got a nice bum and Niall’s got… I don’t know. Niall’s got a nice smile.”

“So you like Niall the most?” When Harry glances across at Zayn he’s grinning, all sharp white teeth.

Harry exhales. “I don’t know. I think…” It’s tricky, this. It’s something that he’s had to learn to navigate over time. “I think that if there was a chance he would like me, I would have liked him back when we met at the start of first year. Does that make sense?”

Zayn’s already nodding. “I know what you mean. No one wants to get their heart broken over a straight boy.”

“Exactly.” Harry shoots him a look sideways. “What about you now? Are you heartbroken?”

“No,” Zayn says, sounding reflective. “I was upset, but I think things are getting better now – hey. Hey, left here!”

“It’s a bit bloody late for that!” Harry says, but he manages to make the turning despite the fact that a car hoots crossly at him. Zayn laughs and hangs onto the door handle. His parents’ house is down a warren of streets that all look the same: terraced houses built with dark gold brick, packed tightly together. It’s not a bad area as far as Harry can tell, but it’s different from where his family lives. There probably aren’t many families around here that have swimming pools, but then Harry didn’t have one until he was a teenager. “I used to live above a pub,” he tells Zayn, apropos of nothing.

“Really?” Zayn says, sounding genuinely interested. “What was it like?”

“Noisy,” Harry says. “Although I learned to change a barrel when I was twelve. Didn’t stop me majorly fucking up when I worked at the student union bar though.”

“What happened?”

“I let Louis lean over the bar and drink Strongbow out of the tap. He got banned for the rest of the term and I got fired.”

Zayn laughs in a way that’s almost surprised, and then he waves a hand and says “Here! The white front door.”

Harry does a bit of extremely nimble parallel parking, despite the fact that out of the corner of his eye he can see the front door opening and he doesn’t really want to bump into any of Zayn’s neighbours’ cars with witnesses. When he gets out of the car there’s an extraordinarily handsome man standing at the end of the garden path, beaming at him. “That was some nice parking,” he says in a broader version of Zayn’s accent.

Harry manages not to say _Hnngh_. Instead he offers him a bright smile, silently thanks every god in the sky that he had a good driving instructor, and says “Thank you! It was a bit of a fluke, I’m afraid. Nice to meet you.” He isn’t sure if it’s Zayn’s dad or uncle or older brother or whether he’s an angel who’s descended from the heavens to be ravishingly handsome at people, so it’s a relief when Zayn comes rushing up holding his backpack and saying “Dad! This is Harry. Harry, this is my dad.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr Malik,” Harry says. His number one priority is not to flirt with Zayn’s dad, so he focuses hard on keeping his smile on the right side of appropriate as he shakes his hand.

They collect their things and make their way inside, where they’re immediately attacked by Zayn’s mother and sisters. His mum is short and has the same high cheekbones as him, and it’s interesting and remarkable to see how his sisters are all combinations of his parents in different ways. Doniya is older and rolls her eyes at Zayn before hugging him, Waliyha is about fifteen and hands them both cups of tea before they’ve even put their bags down, and Safaa is around eleven and flings her arms around Zayn’s waist with wild abandon. “You never come home!” she says, and Zayn leans down to kiss the top of her shiny dark hair and says, “Well, I’m here now.”

Zayn’s mum reminds Harry of his own mum in one crucial way: they both have lines around their eyes because they smile a lot, although obviously he isn’t going to say that out loud in case he gets sent back to Manchester. Instead he beams down at her as she draws him in to hug him hello and insists that he calls her Trisha instead of Mrs Malik. “I’ve made butter chicken,” she tells him then, “but I’ve been worrying, Zayn never tells me anything, you aren’t a vegetarian, are you?”

“I’m not,” he tells her, and she says, “If you are, it’s no problem, I can easily make something else,” and he says, “I’m not!” and Zayn says, “For Christ’s sake, Mum,” before grabbing Harry’s wrist. “We’re going to put our things upstairs,” he announces, and Harry throws an apologetic smile over his shoulder as he follows him upstairs.

“My room’s quite small,” Zayn says as he flings a door open, and he’s right: it’s compact to the say the least, but there’s a single bed in the corner, neatly made with dark blue sheets, and homemade spaceships hanging from the ceiling, and posters of Tupac and David Beckham--

“I didn’t know you liked football,” Harry says.

“I don’t,” Zayn says. “Didn’t you do that when you were a teenager and you were still in the closet? It’s a way to get a fit bloke on your wall without your friends calling you gay.”

“You’re a genius,” Harry tells him. There isn’t much floor space, but in one corner there’s a neatly folded inflatable mattress with a sleeping bag rolled up next to it: there should be enough space to roll it out if he sticks his feet under the desk. “Where was Gigi going to sleep this weekend?”

“You know, I hadn’t thought about it.” Zayn sits down on the edge of his bed and bounces a bit, his smile turning into something lopsided and self-deprecating. “We could have top and tailed in here, I suppose.”

Harry laughs and sits down beside him. “Would she have been all right with the inflatable mattress?”

“She would have got my bed. Which you’re sleeping in, by the way, you’re a guest,” Zayn says.

“Absolutely not,” Harry tells him, and presses his shoulder against Zayn’s. He likes the way that Zayn’s room smells: freshly washed linen and lemon spray that was probably used to clean the surfaces before they arrived. Underneath that he can smell paper and pencils. Opposite them there’s a bookshelf, with Harry Potter and Stephen King and Game of Thrones and a row of comic books – or graphic novels, Liam once told him irritably. Zayn himself smells nice as well: at university Harry has become accustomed to a sort of mustiness from most people, because no one seems to have a dryer so their clothes are usually half-damp or not washed at all. Zayn’s grey t-shirt is slightly wrinkled because Harry doesn’t even know anyone who owns an iron, but it smells nice. He smells nice. Harry turns his head to Zayn and touches Zayn’s shoulder with the tip of his nose, inhaling a little.

“What are you doing?” Zayn asks, lifting a questioning hand to touch Harry’s hair.

“Nuzzling you,” Harry says.

“You’re a freak,” Zayn tells him.

“Thank you.” Harry looks up again. “I like it here.”

“You’ve only been here for thirty seconds,” Zayn objects, but he’s gone slightly pink so Harry knows he’s happy. He shifts away then and says, “So have you been to Bradford before?”

“Nope. It seems nice though.”

Zayn gives him a look.

“It does!” Harry protests. “Do you like it?”

Zayn scratches his chin with a creak of stubble. “I think so. As much as you can like a place that forms you. I like that it’s home.”

His voice is so warm as he speaks that it fills Harry with a gaping sense of loss for his own home that never existed. It isn’t as though he’s spent his life moving around, but he’s moved around enough that nowhere holds a huge amount of important memories for him. He nods a bit and Zayn catches his eye and nudges him gently and says “Do you want to watch TV?”

Harry nods again. It takes a moment of Zayn buzzing around and unzipping his laptop from his rucksack and plugging it in for them to get settled, the laptop between their outstretched legs on Zayn’s blue duvet cover. “Have you seen The Inbetweeners?” Zayn asks, and Harry says “Completed it, mate,” and is oddly proud of himself when Zayn laughs with sincerity, his whole face creasing up. He passes Harry a pillow to lean on against the wall before they start up the first episode. As time passes by Harry turns the side of his face against the pillow, inhales the smell of someone else’s house, someone else’s soap powder, Zayn’s face pressed against this pillow at home and safe in bed for years and years of his life.

*

Butter chicken is Zayn’s favourite, apparently. As he helps himself at the dinner table later, Harry sees Zayn’s mother’s eyes on him, delighting on the way that he’s heaping his plate and helping himself to rice and homemade naan. “Don’t worry, it isn’t too spicy, Harry,” Trisha says confidentially, and she’s right: it heats his tongue but he isn’t left gasping for a glass of milk. Harry sits between Zayn and Doniya, who quizzes him about his family and his course at uni before Trisha tuts at her and says, “Harry isn’t here purely for your entertainment.”

“So why are you here?” Waliyha asks from across the table, her gaze direct and unflinching. “Because my brother’s lame and needed an escort to this wedding because he got dumped--”

At the head of the table, Yaser clears his throat and sends a look at Waliyha that clearly says, _If we didn’t have a guest here, you’d get an absolute bollocking right now._ She shuts up and there’s a moment of uncomfortable chewing. “This really is lovely,” Harry says brightly. “I’d love the recipe.”

“Of course,” Trisha says, but she looks distracted now. “Zayn, are you eating enough? I’m sure you’ve lost weight.”

Zayn rolls his eyes and grunts through a mouthful of chicken, waving a hand over his plate like he’s saying _Obviously I’m eating enough._

“I’m just asking,” Trisha says. “I know what you’re like when it’s exam time. And with Gigi as well – Harry, were you friends with her?”

“I mean,” Harry says, feeling like a deer trapped in the headlights, “I knew her a bit.”

“We really liked her,” Safaa says. “She’s so pretty.”

“She was a lovely girl,” Trisha agrees. “We all had lunch with her and her mum when we drove over to visit during reading week. It’s such a shame--”

“Mum,” Zayn grits out. He reaches out for his water glass and takes a sip and puts it back down again a bit too hard, water splashing onto the table. His fingers are trembling slightly and so Harry does what feels natural: he reaches out and takes hold of Zayn’s hand. It’s just to comfort him and to make him feel better: he interlaces their fingers together and squeezes gently and strokes the pad of his thumb over Zayn’s knuckle. Zayn lets out a breath that sounds relieved and Harry feels some of the tension flood out of him. He’ll take that tension just for a while and hold onto it, because Zayn doesn’t seem like he’s doing very well with it. Families can be difficult, Harry knows that. The expectations that are there despite how much they love you – sometimes because of it. Slowly he releases Zayn’s hand again and looks carefully at his face. He looks calmer now, the line of his mouth less tight and unhappy, and Harry leans against him for a moment, their shoulders brushing, to tell him silently that if Zayn needs him, Harry’s there.

Across the table, Waliyha says: “ _Oh_.”

Harry’s heart lurches in his chest as Trisha says, “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, I had no idea you two boys were…” She waves a hand. “Boyfriends? I don’t know--”

“We’re not boyfriends!” Zayn says, sounding panicky.

Yaser fixes him with a stern gaze and says, “We’ve been over this, Zayn. We’re proud of who you are and whoever you go out with. Please don’t feel as if you ever have to deny any part of yourself to us.”

Trisha’s fanning herself with a napkin. “I’m so sorry I put my foot in it. Talking about your ex when your new boyfriend’s here – I can’t apologise enough--”

“Mum!” Zayn says, shooting a look at Harry. “Stop, I--”

“I was just so worried,” Trisha says. Harry’s starting to see why Zayn never says much: he’s got this family here to say everything for him. It’s nice: it’s warm, and it’s good, and they love him, but it has absolutely made him into a bit of a weirdo who isn’t very good at talking. “You seemed so sad after your break-up and so stressed with your exams. All a parent wants for their child is for them to be happy and – well, Harry, you seem like a lovely boy--”

“Thank you,” Harry says. Zayn shoots him a murderous glance. Across the table, Safaa is nodding in agreement, which is nice. Harry likes having people on his side.

“I’m just so glad that you’ve met someone so sweet. You’re lucky,” Trisha says, smiling tenderly at the two of them. It feels so good, the expression on her face as she looks at them, and the way that Zayn’s dad is gazing at them too with pride and love, and how Zayn’s sisters are smiling and glancing at each other. Harry likes it here amongst them. He likes the warmth and the togetherness of it, he likes the way that the worry has smoothed away from Zayn’s mum’s face now that she thinks Zayn’s content and with someone - and why not? Why not let her be happy? Why not give them some pleasure for the weekend? Why not make Zayn feel less self-conscious at this wedding? Why not be part of this wonderful family for a couple of days?

With absolute certainty, Harry turns to Zayn, and leans in to kiss his cheek. “I’m the lucky one,” he says, and in that moment he truly means it.

*

Of course, Zayn’s raging by the time they get upstairs after dinner. “You lied to my parents!” he whisper-shouts as soon as his bedroom door is shut behind them. “What do you expect me to do, go along with this mental charade of yours? Why would you say that to them?”

Harry sits down on the edge of his bed. “I think you should calm down.”

“I am perfectly calm!” Zayn says, but his eyes are bulging in a way that isn’t particularly calm at all. “You made them think that we – that we…” He waves a hand.

“Are in love,” Harry says calmly.

Zayn makes a horrified face, which is insulting. “For fuck’s sake, Harry! I hardly even know you and now I’ve got to pretend to my family that we’re dating?”

“You don’t have to,” Harry says. “We could go back downstairs and tell them that they got the wrong end of the stick and that we’re just friends.”

“We’re barely even that,” Zayn says. It’s the lack of thought with which he says it that stings: he doesn’t mean it to wound, he’s just stating something as he sees it. Barely even friends. Ouch. Harry schools his face into blankness and does his best to make sure that he doesn’t look injured. “Look,” Zayn says, after a moment. “I don’t know if I want to… they were so happy. My mum was so happy. I don’t know if I want to go downstairs right now and rip that away from them.”

He sits down heavily next to Harry, rubbing his face with his hands. He looks tired: maybe he really isn’t doing particularly well after his break-up and after exams. Maybe his mum had a point, and a reason to be worrying about him. Harry thinks of the way that Zayn’s hand shook when he was putting his water glass back down again, and can’t find it within himself to summon up any ill feelings towards him. Maybe the concept of being in a relationship with Harry really is nightmarish. Maybe that’s why he’s perpetually single, maybe it’s less of a choice than he thought it was. That’s fair.

“Hey,” Zayn says, and reaches out to smack Harry’s hand. “Stop biting your nails. Look, this weekend…”

“We could just go with it,” Harry suggests.

For a second he expects Zayn to look appalled and horrified but instead he just nods and frowns down at the carpet before looking back at Harry. There’s something softer about his face now, his dark eyes wider, the curve of his mouth hesitant and lovely. “All right,” he says. “We can just go with it.”

*

They’ll say that they’ve known each other for a while, they decide. “Just go with the truth,” Zayn says, slightly wild-eyed. His hair is sticking up at the crown of his head and he’s pacing around the small confines of his room like a panther. “Just say we met through Niall.”

“And how did we get together?” Harry prompts him. He gets the feeling that Zayn will be better at thinking up that sort of story: he’s much better at romance and that kind of thing. Harry mostly meets people through having sex with them and accidentally staying in touch.

Zayn freezes for a second, thinking hard, and then his shoulders droop. “Who cares? If anyone asks, just be like _And here we are now_ …” He pairs that with a smile that’s almost too perfect.

“I can do that,” Harry says, although he feels deflated at the thought of it. Every superhero deserves an origin story – surely Zayn’s the sort of person who knows that. They deserve an origin story as well, and part of him would like one that’s beautiful: a story that’s grand and sweeping, an epic romance that people will be talking about for generations to come. But epic romances only have two sorts of endings: a happy ever after, for which they’re far too young and stupid, and a tragedy, which Harry is certain from the amount of crying he did at the end of _The Notebook_ he’s not cut out for. Something vague is probably better, something only half there. He tries on Zayn’s too-perfect smile for size, and Zayn’s eyes fall. “This is all right, isn’t it?” Harry asks, quieter.

“It’s fine. It’s odd but it’s fine. It’ll get my mum off my back for a while. And you and me…” Zayn looks up through long lashes and for a moment Harry’s stomach flips: Zayn looks gorgeous and seductive and for a moment Harry thinks that he’s doing it on purpose. But then Zayn huffs out a sigh and says, “In a few weeks we can just pretend to have some amicable break up and say that we’re staying friends.”

“Maybe we really will be friends by then,” Harry suggests.

Zayn’s smile is more real this time. “I hope so,” he says, and Harry almost believes him.

*

They spend the evening with Zayn’s family, and as it turns out, it’s pleasant. Harry’s never met a set of parents that he couldn’t get along with, and he likes Trisha and Yaser: they’re warm and kind, and Zayn’s sisters are great as well. He likes that they’re spending a Friday night all together – he doesn’t remember the last time he did that with his family. When he was younger, when they still lived with his dad, they spent occasional evenings playing Cluedo or Monopoly all together – Gemma would get first choice of which character she wanted, which was always Miss Scarlet or the little dog. Harry would choose Professor Plum or the top hat, and their mum would be the banker in Monopoly and somehow always end up as the murderer every time they played Cluedo. When they lived over the pub, sometimes his mum would help out behind the bar and he and Gemma would be stuck at a table in the corner: she’d plough through her homework as he stuffed handfuls of free crisps into his mouth and chose songs on the jukebox, the Stones and Bowie and Led Zeppelin. Later at Robin’s there were a couple of nights when they’d just moved in when the pool was still exciting and they all went out together at night in the summer, switching the underwater lights on so the water rippled sapphire and turquoise before he cannonballed into it and sent sparks of crystal shooting through the night air.

Recently, that sort of thing hasn’t happened too much. They’re all still happy, they all still love each other, but there’s nothing like this. Zayn’s entire life and history sat around the table, Trisha bustling off to get some photo albums to show Harry and Doniya only looking up from painting her nails to crack dry jokes that make Safaa let out her bubbling giggles.

In the photo albums, Zayn is sweet-faced and bright-eyed. He clutches a red plastic guitar by its neck in one photo and looks warily at a donkey in another one. Then he’s outside and his fists are full of snow, and then he’s inside and his arms and legs are covered in paint while someone who looks like she’s probably his nan laughs heartily beside him, her head tilted back. Next to Harry, Zayn laughs at the photos and talks about how embarrassing they are even as he tilts his head to look closer. “I miss Grandad,” he says at one point, touching a slightly blurred face reverently with his fingertip and looking over into Trisha’s eyes. She just nods and looks down and Harry can almost feel the knot of grief in her throat.

It’s a privilege, honestly. The whole thing, it’s a privilege to be there.

Their chairs are close together, his and Zayn’s. Harry rests the crook of his elbow on the back of Zayn’s chair. In the middle of the table there’s a plate full of Kitkats and Penguins and when Zayn takes a Kitkat he snaps it in half and offers one finger to Harry. Harry smiles his thanks and the corners of Zayn’s eyes crinkle as he smiles back.

He goes out to smoke and leaves Harry there with his family. He thinks that he should probably feel disconcerted or worried about what he should say to them but he isn’t. He just feels warm and enveloped by them and entirely included. Trisha offers him a Tunnock’s teacake and looks stern until he takes it, and asks him about his course, and what he wants to do after uni. “Law,” he says. “But I don’t know about being a lawyer.”

He waits for them to tell him that he could make good money if he went into law, because that’s what everyone says. He knows he could, but not everything is about money. Instead Yaser nods and says, “That corporate lifestyle – it isn’t for everyone.”

“Exactly!” Harry says. “I sometimes think that I could do some good with it – I could volunteer with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Or I could be the good sort of lawyer – family law or criminal law or…” Even the thought of it ties his stomach up in knots. “I don’t really know,” he says. The whole world is so frightening. Everyone keeps saying that it’s impossible to get a job and pay rent and that eating avocado is the reason that millennials are all going to have appalling lives. Luckily, Harry doesn't like avocado, but there are probably bigger problems than that, and anyway he’ll spend all his money on perfectly poached eggs and expensive artisan sourdough bread instead. He needs to earn money; he needs to do a job that he doesn’t want to do; he needs to find something bigger in this world so that there’s a point to it all.

It probably isn’t a good idea to say that to his fake boyfriend’s parents. Instead he smiles as calmly as possible and says, “Who knows? It’s exciting that there are so many possibilities out there.”

Trisha nods, but she looks slightly sceptical because she’s probably like Harry’s mum in that she can smell bullshit from a mile off. “Zayn isn’t sure what he wants to do either – but I’m sure you’ve already talked about all of that.”

Harry has no idea, but he nods anyway and says, “He’s brilliant. No matter what he does, he’ll be great at it.”

It’s then that Zayn comes back in, rubbing his hands together and smiling tentatively around at everyone before he slips back into the chair beside Harry. He smells of smoke and the outside air, grey and blue and brown. “What were you talking about?”

“You,” Harry says, and winks at him.

Zayn actually goes pink, which is brilliant. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.” Harry wriggles his eyebrows.

Zayn narrows his eyes hard at him for a moment before visibly dismissing it. “Whatever,” he says. “Weirdo. Would anyone like a tea?”

“Bit late for me,” Trisha says. “Caffeine.” Yaser nods, and they both rise to their feet. “Be ready to leave by twelve tomorrow at the absolute latest,” Trisha says sternly, and then they go upstairs, followed by Doniya and Waliyha shepherding a yawning Safaa.

Harry looks at Zayn and says, “Finally ve are alone,” in the worst Transylvanian accent ever.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Zayn says.

From the landing upstairs Trisha shouts “ZAYN! LANGUAGE!”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “C’mon,” he says, and leads the way into the living room, which is lined with comfortably squashy sofas. He points at a console next to the TV and says, “D’you want to play?”

Harry isn’t even sure what it is, whether it’s a Nintendo or an X-box or if they’re the same thing, so he just makes a face and says, “Nah.”

“We could watch some TV. Or we could go to bed,” Zayn says.

Harry isn’t quite tired yet, and the idea of lying on Zayn’s inflatable mattress trying to get to sleep while being hyperconscious of him across the room sounds like hell. “TV’s good,” he says.

“All right.” Zayn sits down on one of the sofas and flips the TV on, puts the sound down quiet so it doesn’t disturb anyone, starts flicking through channels. Then he looks up at Harry. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” Harry has no idea why he was still standing up. He sits down hurriedly next to Zayn and accidentally jostles his elbow, but Zayn doesn’t complain so he just leaves his arm where it is, curled into Zayn’s. He remembers the way Zayn’s skin looked outside that club, all golden and creamy next to his tattoo, and it feels good too, warm and smooth. It isn’t a big deal, obviously, so he shifts a bit before picking up Zayn’s arm and holding it out in front of them. “Can I look at your tattoos?”

“I think you are already,” Zayn says, sounding half amused and half like something that Harry can’t completely understand. “I’ve got more on my other arm.” He holds up his right arm and Harry takes that instead, runs his fingertips over palm trees and dates and stars and boom boxes and books. “None of them mean much,” Zayn confesses. “Just moments in time.”

“Mine are the same,” Harry says. “Sometimes people tell me I’ll regret them, but--”

“Life’s too short for regrets like that,” Zayn says, and it’s pretty much the exact same thing that Harry was about to say so he nods. Zayn pulls his arm away from Harry’s hands and says, “I hope it hasn’t been too awkward so far.”

“It’s been nice,” Harry says. “Your family’s been really nice to me. Very welcoming.”

“Yeah. Good. I thought so.” Zayn lets out a breath. “What did they say when I was outside?”

“Not much. We were talking about uni and the future and stuff. I was saying that I don’t know if I want to be a lawyer and your mum said you aren’t sure about what to do either.”

Zayn nods slowly. “Okay. Yeah, that’s true. Why don’t you want to be a lawyer?”

“Because law’s fucking boring,” Harry says, and Zayn laughs a little. “No, really,” he continues. “Maybe not to other people, but it isn’t my thing. I should have done something else. English, maybe.”

Zayn’s already shaking his head. “No. You shouldn’t have done English. I shouldn’t have done English. It’s going to be so hard to get a job and all the money my parents spent on me going to uni is going to be totally wasted…” He bites his bottom lip, cutting himself off. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Harry says. “Don’t you have loans and stuff?”

“Of course I have loans,” Zayn says, looking at him like he’s slightly thick. “I have a grant too. But it doesn’t cover everything. And I could be working full time like Doniya – she pays them rent. I should be paying them rent.”

“I think they just seem really proud of you,” Harry tells him honestly. “And you’ll find a job. You’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah? Maybe.” Zayn doesn’t sound like he particularly believes it. “Anyway, whatever. What the fuck is this on TV?”

Harry squints at it. “A game show,” he deduces.

“Well done, Sherlock,” Zayn says, and knocks his shoulder gently against Harry’s. When Harry turns to look at him he catches the tail-end of a smile. In companionable silence they watch the game show for a few minutes. Harry doesn’t know any of the answers but it doesn’t matter because neither do the contestants. Beside him Zayn is a comfortable presence: Harry likes it, the fact of him there, the warmth of his skin and his nearness. In another world he would probably sink into his side and under his arm and he would press a little kiss to the side of his stubbled jaw and Zayn would kiss his temple and they would watch TV together like boyfriends, like Zayn’s family thinks they are. They’d be close both physically and emotionally and it would be good – that’s the thing. It would be really fucking good. “I was thinking,” Zayn says, sounding faraway. “Our story. Maybe it should better than what we decided on before.”

“Yeah?” Harry says, his heart skipping a beat.

“Yeah.” Zayn’s eyes are still on the TV but Harry can tell he isn’t completely focused on it. “Maybe we were both in the library one day, just doing work a few rows away from each other, and you left something behind when you got up to go.”

“Okay,” Harry says, shifting slightly closer.

“Yeah. And I grabbed it, and I came after you. And outside, it was raining, right?”

“Would you have come after me if it was raining? Would you have been all right with getting wet?”

There are traces of a smile making their way onto Zayn’s mouth. “Yeah, of course. I’m a gentleman.”

“Course you are.” Harry feels so warm inside.

“Course I am. So I would have come after you – and the thing you left, maybe it was your umbrella!” Zayn sounds triumphant. “And so you’d put it up and we’d both be standing there in the rain--”

“Like in _The Notebook_ ,” Harry says.

“Like in _The Notebook_ ,” Zayn agrees, even though Harry didn’t think he was the sort of person who’d have watched it and remembered it. “And we’d both be huddled under your umbrella and you’d say – this is your turn, what would you say?”

“Is it raining?” Harry does his best Andie MacDowell voice. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Zayn snorts out a laugh, a sound that’s almost sweeter for its ugliness, and says, “Be serious.”

“I’m always serious.” Harry schools his face into sternness and turns to Zayn, studying him and frowning until Zayn laughs again. Then Harry relaxes and thinks about it. What would he say? In the hypothetical movie moment of his life, what words would come out of his mouth? “I’d say – come under the umbrella with me, and then I’d walk you home so you wouldn’t get wet.”

“And when we got there,” Zayn says, “I’d say: come inside for a cup of tea.”

“And I’d say yes,” Harry says. He can feel a tremor in his voice, so slight that he doesn’t know if Zayn can hear it too.

There’s a moment of quiet between them: Harry can hear one of Zayn’s sisters dashing down the hallway upstairs, and the low hum of the TV across the room, and the louder hum of next door’s TV as well. But between the two of them there’s just stillness, and Harry hears Zayn exhale, jerky and almost nervous. Harry reaches out and lays his hand on Zayn’s chest, palm flat over his heart, and feels it beat like a butterfly in a cage. He doesn’t know how fast hearts usually beat, but he’s fairly sure that Zayn’s speeds up as soon as Harry touches him. “And then,” Harry says, “or later – a week later, maybe, or whatever, probably sooner, I don’t know – later, I would do this.”

He doesn’t think it through. He isn’t thinking at all, which is rare for him. His brain usually gets itself in his way, it stops him in his tracks, it keeps him at a distance. Instead he listens to Zayn’s heart beating under his hand and to his own too, and to what he wants and maybe even what he needs, and leans in to press his mouth against Zayn’s. For a second, it’s honestly not the greatest kiss: Zayn’s still and Harry can practically hear him mentally freaking out and so he rubs his chest gently and pushes his hand up so that his thumb traces the line of Zayn’s collarbone through his shirt and so his fingers are resting on his neck. And then Zayn kisses him back: there’s the pressure of his mouth and a bit of a scrabble against the sofa cushions as he sits up a bit so he can press himself closer, and it’s good then: it’s so good as Harry feels Zayn’s hand in his hair and a half smile on his lips.

It breaks after a moment, like the tide on a shore, gentle and slow with a couple more kisses and then their cheeks pressed together and the sharp sweep of Zayn’s eyelashes against the side of Harry’s face as he blinks a couple of times. Their breath too, the sound luminous in the flickering light of the TV, heavier than usual; he turns his face and kisses the corner of Zayn’s mouth and then his lips again. “Okay,” Zayn says after a moment against Harry’s mouth, low and musical and quizzical. “So – that’s what you would do.”

“What?” All Harry can think about is kissing him again.

“You – it’s – that’s the story we would – you don’t have to…” Zayn’s shifting away a bit, not making eye contact completely.

“Right.” The hypothetical rain thing. That’s what Harry would have done: he would have kissed him like that. Except now he has kissed him like that, and it isn’t hypothetical any more. He doesn’t know what to say, so he just looks at Zayn and wonders if something’s going to click and change and start to make sense.

Of course it doesn’t. Zayn mumbles something about how they should get to bed, and so they stand up and turn the TV off and have a gentle, awkward argument about who should wash up the couple of mugs that have been left dirty in the sink. They both win: Harry washes and Zayn dries, the presence of him right there almost too much. His quietness doesn’t feel good or comforting any more – it feels like there’s something going on in his head that probably isn’t flattering towards Harry and that he wants to know about anyway.

Upstairs they drift around each other: while Zayn is in the bathroom brushing his teeth, Harry puts on red checked pyjama bottoms that he brought with him that he’s never worn before because he usually sleeps naked but he’s fairly certain that if he did that tonight he’d give Zayn an aneurysm. He’s halfway through blowing up the inflatable bed with a foot pump when Zayn gets back in there.

“Let me--” Zayn mumbles, and Harry says, “It’s all right,” and Zayn rolls his eyes and heaves a bit of a sigh like Harry’s being annoying, which doesn’t really seem fair. He finishes pumping up the airbed in silence while Zayn mostly just stands there looking awkward and frowning at the floor and rubbing the back of his neck before grabbing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and vanishing off to the bathroom to change into them.

When Zayn comes back in, Harry’s wrapped up like a sausage roll in the sleeping bag on top of the inflatable bed. His feet are under Zayn’s desk but so long as he doesn’t make any sudden flailing movements he probably won’t impale himself on anything. “I said I’d sleep there,” Zayn says, sounding almost upset. “You’re the guest!”

“It’s all right, I’m perfectly comfortable,” Harry says, and wriggles a bit to demonstrate it. “See?”

Zayn sighs again, but this time he doesn’t sound so much annoyed as a bit rattled and on edge. He turns the light off and accidentally treads on Harry’s hand when he’s stepping over him to get to his own bed. “Sorry, did I…”

“No,” Harry says, even though he did and his hand actually kind of hurts. His eyes begin to adjust to the darkness of the room: the curtains are outlined with faint grey light from the streetlamp outside, and on the ceiling there are constellations picked out with glow-in-the-dark stars. He doesn’t recognise any, although that makes sense because he knows absolutely zero about astronomy. Maybe Zayn made up his own constellations: that seems like a Zayn thing to do.

He hears Zayn exhale and clear his throat and the rustle of sheets as he rolls over to get comfortable. When Harry shifts, the air mattress lets out a weird farting noise and there’s dead silence from Zayn’s bed, like he’s holding his breath and not moving at all. Into the awkward darkness Harry says: “Erm. That wasn’t me. That was the bed.”

“Whatever you say, Styles,” Zayn says, his voice half muffled. Harry hmms out a laugh, feeling more comfortable, and then Zayn says quietly, “You know, you don’t have to – I don’t know what the fuck that was downstairs. But you don’t need to – Christ. You don’t need to get into character. This whole thing was probably a mistake but you don’t need to – do that.”

Harry almost says _Do what_ , even though he knows exactly what Zayn was talking about. For once in his life he doesn’t want to be contrary. He doesn’t want to say _But I wanted to_ either. He doesn’t like to make himself vulnerable and he’s starting to get the feeling that Zayn doesn’t either. Instead he just says “Good night, Zayn,” and on a wistful exhale Zayn says, “Good night, Harry.”

__*_ _

__Harry wakes up the next morning with a jolt. Zayn’s standing over him, peering down at him and frowning doubtfully. “Holy fuck,” Harry manages to say. His heart’s pounding like he’s about to die. If he dies, the last thing he’ll ever see is up Zayn’s nose: it’s not the worst view but it’s not the best either. “Morning?”_ _

__“Morning,” Zayn says. “I was actually just wondering if I should wake you up.”_ _

__“And you managed it by staring creepily,” Harry says._ _

__Zayn shrugs and steps over him. “I’m going for a shower.”_ _

__Harry nods a bit. When Zayn’s gone he turns his face into his pillow and tries to go back to sleep. It doesn’t seem possible: the inflatable bed has deflated overnight so that his bum’s resting on the floor, and light is coming through a gap in the curtains. Instead he stands up, cracks his neck and then his knuckles. Zayn hasn’t made his bed and there’s still a dent in his pillows from his head. The covers are making a cosy little den that looks still-warm, and for a moment Harry’s tempted to curl up in it. But that would be a violation, especially now that Zayn’s made it clear that nothing’s going to be happening between them. Which is fine with Harry! He never thought that it would. A bit of flirting was just a happy side effect of making sure that Zayn’s parents didn’t think he was a sad loner. But he still feels a bit empty as he puts a hand down onto Zayn’s sheets and sneaks it beneath the duvet, where it’s still warm from Zayn’s body heat. He presses his palm against the mattress and for a moment he allows himself to feel whatever it is that he’s feeling: sadness, strangely, in an odd and empty way. It’s all stupid because forty-eight hours ago none of this was even a factor. It’s just because he and Zayn sat in a car together for a couple of hours and that always helps people connect with each other, and because Zayn was sad, and because Harry – God help him – has always liked to help sad people feel happier._ _

__He shakes his head as though that might help shake away any of the stupid, shitty thoughts - it resolutely does not - and then he wrenches Zayn’s curtains open. Outside the sky is slate-grey and the sun is pale white where it cracks through the clouds. From here, the city looks bleak, but every city looks bleak on an overcast day – and anyway, there are trees in the distance, greenery, hills even. If he set off now, he could probably walk there and back before they have to leave for the wedding. He doesn’t know much about Yorkshire. Louis is from Doncaster but that’s over an hour away. He knows from looking at Google Maps that Bradford isn’t far from the Yorkshire Dales: he can imagine Zayn going walking there, skinny legs in shorts and slipping over rocks in battered Converse, squinting at a map, the sun in his eyes and glinting off his cheekbones. He can imagine himself beside him: he would fashion them both sticks out of dead branches he found along the trail, and Zayn would roll his eyes at him and they’d keep them in the boot of Harry’s car for the next time they went walking. Zayn would clip pieces from the plants they’d pass as they walked and wrap them in wet paper to replant at home, or he’d press them between the pages of his favourite book, to find years later so he can be reminded of this day. They’d climb a hill – just a small one, Harry isn’t mad and he absolutely does not own walking boots because he does not have a single outfit that they’d look even remotely acceptable with – and they’d take a selfie at the top, cheeks pressed together – and the quiet between them as they walked would be comfortable and warm, and the conversation would flow easily between them, the way it did yesterday in Harry’s car. Zayn would reach for his hand, and--_ _

__“Harry?” Zayn’s back. Harry turns to see him in the doorway, one towel around his waist and a smaller one in his hand as he dries off his hair, which is jet black and dripping on his shoulders. He’s got more tattoos than Harry realised, and broad shoulders and a small waist, and lines leading from his hips to--_ _

__He looks back up at Zayn’s face and says, his mouth drier than usual, “Yeah?”_ _

__“Shower’s free.”_ _

__“Right.”_ _

__In the shower, Harry has a shameful wank that’s made even more shameful when he hears the ripple of Zayn’s sisters talking and laughing outside on their way downstairs. He is a terrible pervert, clearly, he should be arrested - and then he thinks of the curve of Zayn’s mouth and the way it felt against his own lips and comes hard against the shower wall._ _

__He rinses it off because he’s nothing if not a responsible houseguest, and turns the shower off. When he gets into Zayn’s bedroom again Zayn’s standing there wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His feet are bare, which Harry finds quite intimate. He’s never seen Zayn’s bare feet before. “I’m putting my suit on right before we leave,” Zayn explains. “I’ll absolutely spill something down myself.”_ _

__Harry can relate to that feeling. He pulls on his jeans, which takes quite a lot of wriggling because they’re rather tight, and flings on one of his favourite shirts, which is candy-striped pink and extremely billowy. Whenever there’s a bit of a breeze it makes him feel like Beyonce, which he thinks is the way that everyone deserves to feel every minute of their lives. He follows Zayn downstairs, where his mum trills “Morning, boys!” from the kitchen and gestures expansively at a full toast rack. Zayn says, “Wicked,” and sits down before selecting the most burned piece for himself and energetically beginning to butter it. “Are you excited about today?” Zayn’s mum asks, coming up behind Zayn and tucking in the label on the back of his t-shirt for him as he makes irritated noises and tries to wriggle away. “Meeting all the family, but no pressure!”_ _

__“Luckily I’m very charming,” Harry says, and she laughs like she doesn’t believe him but finds him endearing anyway. Little does she know, that’s part of his charm, so as always he’s the winner._ _

__“Do you like dancing?” Trisha asks, clicking on the kettle before leaning against the sideboard, her own steaming mug of tea in her hands. “Zayn isn’t much of a dancer.”_ _

__“Rude,” Zayn says, through a mouthful of crumbs._ _

__“I know he isn’t,” Harry agrees. Zayn makes an aggrieved noise and starts to choke slightly. Harry reaches out to pat his back and says, “I’ve seen you when we go out, babe. You do this.” He lifts his right arm, his first two fingers extended, and bobs it around a bit._ _

__“You do this,” Zayn argues, and starts to gyrate his shoulder. “You look like a malfunctioning robot.”_ _

__“Trisha,” Harry says, “your son’s being very rude to me.”_ _

__“I know,” Trisha says. “He’s terrible. We’ve brought him up all wrong.”_ _

__“You’ve made some very grave mistakes,” Harry agrees seriously._ _

__She laughs. “Tea, boys?”_ _

__“Tea,” Zayn agrees, and Harry nods as she turns around to the kettle and starts getting mugs out of a cupboard. Zayn seems more comfortable now in front of his mum, which is odd, but Harry supposes it makes sense in a way: right now absolutely anything could be explained away. That kiss on the sofa last night is a completely different story. Beside him, Zayn wrinkles his nose and says, “Dancing is the devil’s exercise.”_ _

__“You won’t be saying that when we’re slow-dancing to Frank Sinatra tonight,” Harry says._ _

__“I would literally rather die,” Zayn says, but he’s gone slightly pink._ _

__Trisha puts mugs of tea down in front of them. Harry’s got a Sports Direct one, and Zayn’s says To My Wonderful Brother. “Saf gave it to me,” he explains when he sees Harry looking at it. “The others are way too cool for that.”_ _

__“Gemma would never,” Harry agrees. “Although she gave me a George Michael one at Christmas.” Since he came out, he has become accustomed to receiving gifts with a decidedly homosexual theme alongside his other presents. He doesn’t object to it in the slightest: part of him would like to pitch a fit on principle, because the fact that he likes boys doesn’t automatically mean that he likes Cher (although obviously he does, because she’s an absolute legend). Still, it’s better than getting a frog ornament every single year just because he once feigned too much excitement at his next door neighbour’s tiny pond. Being polite will one day be the death of him._ _

__“George Michael?” Zayn raises his eyebrows. “Sick.”_ _

__“Has he told you about when he did _I Can’t Make You Love Me_ at his school talent show?” Trisha says._ _

__“Mum, kindly shut up,” Zayn says._ _

__To Harry’s utter and eternal delight she does not. “He was fifteen,” she says. “Everyone else was doing all these rock songs--”_ _

__“Oasis,” Zayn says disapprovingly, forgetting his embarrassment so that he can gently slag off indie music. “Green Day. You know – another turning point, a fork stuck in the road…” He hums it and just from that Harry can tell that what Niall said about him was right: he can sing, and it’s beautiful._ _

__“Let me tell it,” Trisha says. “Anyway, everyone else was part of some terrible band or doing something like juggling--”_ _

__“The jugglers weren’t even real jugglers,” Zayn says. “It was actually just so they could hit my old science teacher in the face with juggling balls and claim it was a mistake.”_ _

__“Anyway,” Trisha says. “They were all groups of people, giggling and being silly, and the audience were all talking, and us parents were all at the back, and then Zayn comes on stage, just him and a microphone and a backing track he’d got off the internet, and his voice was just – oh, Harry, you wouldn’t believe it.”_ _

__“Mum!” Zayn says. Even his neck is pink now._ _

__“Zayn, I’ve told you so many times: it’s all right to be proud of yourself,” Trisha says. “It was beautiful. His voice, Harry. Has he ever sung for you?”_ _

__Harry looks at Zayn and Zayn looks back at him just a bit from beneath hooded eyes, like he’s worried that Harry’s going to make fun of him. Instead Harry reaches out for him and takes his hand, interlacing their fingers together and squeezing gently. “No, he hasn’t. I wish he would.”_ _

__“Maybe one day I will,” Zayn says. Harry wishes he could believe it._ _

__*_ _

__The cousin of Zayn’s who’s getting married is from the white side of his family, which disappoints Harry quite a lot, although he tries not to show it. “But they’re all Irish,” Zayn says encouragingly. “So at least there’s going to be a lot of alcohol.”_ _

__It’s somewhat of a consolation. Harry will leave respectfully exploring another culture for another day. “Maybe I should be your fake boyfriend to the next wedding on the Muslim side of your family as well,” he suggests._ _

__Zayn elbows him in the ribs quite hard, which he probably deserves. They’re sitting on the sofa wearing their suits and waiting for Zayn’s sisters to be ready. Zayn’s hair is combed neatly into a quiff, and his beard is trimmed close to his skin, and he smells clean and fresh. “What makes you think I’ll be single next time we have a family wedding?”_ _

__“Mostly your face,” Harry says. “It’s very unlovable.”_ _

__Zayn looks at him with his jaw slightly agape and then he laughs, low and sincere as though he can’t quite believe the shit he’s hearing and as though he also can’t quite believe that he likes hearing it. Harry beams at him and wrinkles his nose in a way that he knows is adorable, and Zayn sighs and shakes his head and says, “Incorrigible.”_ _

__“Thank you,” Harry says._ _

__“Not a compliment,” Zayn says._ _

__“Lies.” Harry smiles at him again, and then his mum comes into the room and says “We’re all ready! What _are_ you boys doing?” as if they’re the issue and not the fact that Waliyha has been shrieking for ten minutes upstairs about how she can’t get her eyeliner right. They all pile into cars outside; Zayn’s older sisters go with their parents and Safaa hops into the back seat of Harry’s car as Zayn slides into the passenger seat. “Why is there an empty bottle of vodka here?” Safaa asks, looking at Harry in the rearview mirror._ _

__“We have a friend called Louis,” Harry says. “He’s what’s known as a ‘bad influence’.”_ _

__She seems to be satisfied with that response, which is good because it was entirely honest. As they drive along, Harry can feel his heart lifting. He likes the feel of Zayn next to him in the car, and he likes following Zayn’s parents’ car ahead of them, and he likes the way that Safaa’s humming along to the radio from the back seat. He likes that they’re going to a wedding, even though he doesn’t know the people who are getting married. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, he’s happy that he gets to spend the day celebrating love. And he’s happy that he’s spending time with a family that’s apparently completely fine with the concept and reality of Zayn dating a boy. They might not be entirely truthful about their relationship, but that doesn’t mean that Harry can’t be truthful about who he is. That freedom is heady and blissful. He puts the windows down slightly so that a breeze streams into a car and cranks up the stereo when Van Morrison comes on. “Mum loves this song!” Safaa says delightedly, and starts singing along: “Hey, where did we go…”_ _

__“Oh, I hate this,” Zayn grumbles, and reaches out to turn the volume down._ _

__“My car! Get off!” Harry exclaims, and Zayn huffs out a sigh and jerks his hand back again. “That’s better…” Harry lets the song wash over him as the sun cracks through a cloud outside. He doesn’t know why Bradford’s got a bad rep: it looks pretty great right now. Racism, probably. “Sha la la,” he sings along to the song. “Zayn!”_ _

__“Sha la la la,” Zayn says bad temperedly._ _

__“That’s better,” Harry says. Safaa’s singing along in the back too and her voice is bright and clear. “My brown eyed boy,” Harry sings as he stops at a traffic light, and reaches out a hand to touch the back of Zayn’s neck. “You, my brown eyed boy.”_ _

__He feels Zayn laugh, feels him turn, feels his mouth press against the inside of Harry’s wrist. “My green eyed boy,” he sings back, barely more than a breath, and Harry feels as though he might just burst with happiness._ _

__*_ _

__The wedding is at a community hall, which is good because incense makes Harry sneeze repeatedly and he doesn't want Zayn’s extended family to think he’s about to infect them with something grotesque and snot-filled. There is ivy twined around the ends of rows of seats, and pink peonies too. People smile at them, aunts and uncles reach in to hug Zayn and kiss his cheeks, cousins grin and wave. People ask Harry’s name, and how they met, and say how nice it is to meet him. Zayn is quiet beside him and Harry doesn’t mind that: he’s fine with being gregarious and sociable and cheerful. He’s good at it so long as he gets some time to himself at the end of a day full of it. He feels more nervous than he usually would, though: he tempers his smiles to make sure that he doesn’t ever look supercilious or distanced, and he makes sure that he listens when people are talking to him, and he does his absolute best to memorise names. He wants to make a really great impression, he realises as Zayn makes stilted conversation with a tall girl with long brown hair. “This is Carla,” he says to Harry. “She’s my--”_ _

__“Second cousin,” Carla says. “Maybe. Half cousin? Is that a thing?”_ _

__“I don’t know!” Zayn’s laugh sounds a bit desperate._ _

__“Shall we just say cousin and bring the family closer together?” Harry smiles. He can feel tenseness rippling off Zayn’s body. “It’s nice to meet you, Carla. I’m--”_ _

__“This is my boyfriend,” Zayn says. “He’s my boyfriend. He’s Harry.”_ _

__“I’m Harry,” Harry agrees. “His boyfriend.”_ _

__“Lovely,” Carla says, and then lies, “I’ve heard a lot about you!”_ _

__Harry appreciates the lie. He knows that it comes from kindness. “All good, I hope!” he beams._ _

__“Of course!” Carla smiles right back at him. She seems nice. Everyone seems nice. Harry meets Zayn’s aunt Jess and uncle Kieran and his cousins Sean and Marie and Lottie, and his great uncle Kevin, and his auntie Sharon - “She drinks,” Zayn mutters into Harry’s ear as they move away. “Could you smell it?”_ _

__“Everyone’s got an alkie auntie,” Harry murmurs reassuringly. “They’re all lovely.”_ _

__“Yeah?” Zayn’s face looks more pinched than it usually does._ _

__“Yeah.” Harry reaches for Zayn’s hand and slides their fingers together._ _

__“My palm’s sweaty,” Zayn warns him._ _

__“I noticed,” Harry says, not letting go. He glances around, but no one’s looking at them. “You really don’t like these things, do you?”_ _

__“The other side of my family is easier,” Zayn says. “I don’t know this side as well. Some of them were arseholes to my mum after she married my dad. It was a whole thing. Like, the people who mattered were okay with it once they were used to it, but there are always people on the fringes being dicks and making comments, you know?” He frowns. “You probably don’t know, do you?”_ _

__“Not really,” Harry admits. It’s something that he can never really understand, for obvious reasons. All he can do is try to not be a dick about it. “But you can talk to me about it.”_ _

__“Thank you,” Zayn says. “I sometimes get a bit…” He takes a breath and glances away, past Harry’s head. Harry can feel energy pulsing through him, although he doesn’t think it’s in a good way. Zayn feels so tense and as though he’s all tangled up, like if Harry touched his back he’d find his muscles in knots. He would do that: he would slowly knead those knots away until Zayn felt happier again. “I get a bit worried sometimes,” Zayn says then, after a moment._ _

__Harry looks at him thoughtfully, and squeezes his hand gently. “A bit anxious?” he says, choosing the word and laying it out with care._ _

__Zayn’s eyes are back on his again. “Yeah,” he says, almost defensive. “A bit anxious.”_ _

__Harry nods a bit. He’s trying to stay calm on the outside but on the inside he can feel his brain whirring as he tries to figure out how to make it better, what he can do today to make it easier, what it might mean in the long term – the long term! It’s so stupid to even consider the long term. They aren’t even going out for real. It doesn’t even matter. But as friends, perhaps: no matter what happens after today, Harry would like there to be a long term. He would like today to go as smoothly as possible and for Zayn to feel happy and comfortable and unjudged. He touches the side of Zayn’s face and feels clumsy doing it: he isn’t used to little gestures, he doesn’t know how people who are in love do it. But Zayn’s gaze is more naked and trusting now, his dark eyes wide and some of the tension fading away. His stubble is prickly under Harry’s palm and he strokes the line where it meets Zayn’s cheek and smiles at him. He’s shorter, just a bit, just enough for Harry to have to tilt his head down to kiss him if that was to happen. It’s such a busy room full of people though and it’s probably inappropriate to think that right now, but it’s a fact: he would have to dip his head a little, he would have to step in just a little closer--_ _

__But no. That isn’t the point. He says, “That’s okay. I’m on your side. I’m here for you. If you need a break I’ll cover for you. Whatever I can do to make it easier, you tell me.”_ _

__“All right.” Zayn nods, and Harry just – he doesn’t think about it. He leans in and kisses Zayn’s cheek before releasing him. He’s half expecting Zayn to look disconcerted or rattled but instead he just looks more settled and less like an alarmed rabbit. He doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand, either._ _

__They sit about halfway down the room eventually, in a row with the rest of Zayn’s immediate family. When Harry glances down he can see Zayn’s mum talking very intently to Doniya and Waliyha; on their other side, Zayn’s dad is playing a game with Safaa that seems to involve the two of them slapping each other’s palms gently and laughing a lot. Zayn follows Harry’s gaze down to his mum and sisters and rolls his eyes very slightly before leaning in to mutter in Harry’s ear. “They don’t like my cousin’s boyfriend.”_ _

__“The one who’s getting married today?” Harry’s voice is too loud, he knows it the second the words are out of his mouth._ _

__“Shut up!” Zayn looks scandalised and amused at the same time. “But yeah. Literally everyone in my family thinks it’s going to end in disaster. They’ve split up three times already. Maybe more, I don’t get told all the gossip when I’m away at uni.”_ _

__“Maybe,” Harry says, “if you keep getting back together that means you can’t live without each other.”_ _

__“D’you think?” Zayn raises his eyebrows interestedly._ _

__“I don’t really know,” Harry says. “Probably.” It isn’t like he has enough experiences of real love to be able to qualify any opinion he might happen to have on the subject._ _

__“Hmm.” Zayn looks more closed off now, as though he’s turned himself inward and whatever’s going on in his head is more interesting than what’s going on in the rest of the room. Harry can relate to that: he spends a lot of time fishing around in his own brain and coming up with things that are far more fascinating than whatever’s really happening. But for some reason right now all he can think of is Zayn and what's inside his head and behind his thoughtful eyes. “Me and my ex--” Zayn begins, and Harry’s stomach plummets down towards the floor. But before they can finish their conversation, music sweeps its way over the room, a low sweet melody, a love song that Harry has never heard before. The groom standing at the altar turns quickly to look at the aisle as though his bride might be there already, his face open and excited. He looks like despite any problems they might have had, he doesn’t want to spend a single second more of his life apart from her._ _

__*_ _

__“Did you cry?” Waliyha demands, leaning over Doniya to stare at Harry. “I glanced over after the vows and I thought I saw you wiping your face.”_ _

__“Maybe,” Harry allows, and wriggles his eyebrows at her. She laughs before getting to her feet and shaking her head a little, her sheet of black hair gleaming almost blue as it falls perfectly into place. Harry did cry a bit, as it happens: in his whole life, he hasn’t ever been to a wedding that he hasn’t cried at. They’re beautiful and unfathomable, like all the best things are. To be so certain and so happy: that’s something to strive for. It’s more than he ever expects to have for himself._ _

__“Soppy git,” Zayn says, smiling sideways at him and reaching for his hand. It’s jarring for a second and Harry feels as though during the ceremony he passed into an alternate universe where they’re real. He basks in it and wonders what it would like to be loved in a way that’s exclusive to him, not just one of a crowd of acquaintances or a group of friends or a cluster of best friends. He looks at Zayn and there must be something odd in his eyes because a flicker of emotion that Harry can’t identify runs over Zayn’s face. He doesn’t so much drop Harry’s hand as let it go gently as they stand up._ _

__Harry still plays his part though. Next door where the tables for dinner are laid out, there are glasses of slightly warm cava and orange juice so he takes one and sticks by Zayn’s side. He smiles and flirts gently with older women and puts a hand on the bottom of Zayn’s back, and Zayn leans into it, into him; he smiles at Harry’s jokes and looks at him and takes his hand again when they wind through the crowd to go outside to smoke. Harry isn’t planning on it obviously: he just stands there as Zayn smokes quickly and apologises every time Harry grimaces when smoke hits him in the face. “Smoking’s one of my things,” Harry says, swatting at pale grey and not thinking too hard about it. “I’ve always said I’d never go out with a smoker.”_ _

__“Sounds like having a list of types of people you’d never go out with might be one of the reasons you’re single,” Zayn points out, his voice sharper than usual._ _

__Harry doesn’t feel like apologising for hurting him, if that was what he did. Annoying him, most likely. People get funny about that sort of thing, probably with the same hot, guilty irritation that he feels every time he sees a vegan look at him while he’s eating a burger. “Sounds like I’m not the one who has to take fake dates to weddings,” he says._ _

__Zayn scrunches his face up ruefully and laughs a bit. “Touché. I know it’s a deal breaker for a lot of people.”_ _

__“Was Gigi a smoker?” Harry asks. He doesn’t know why, but part of him wants to know about their relationship. What they were like. How deeply they loved. Whether they split up and got back together multiple times. Whether it might happen again._ _

__Zayn looks surprised. “No. Well, I mean, she’d smoke a joint if it was around.”_ _

__“Hmm,” Harry says._ _

__“Hmm?” Zayn asks._ _

__“Nah,” Harry says. “You almost done?”_ _

__“Almost.” Zayn sucks at his cigarette one last time before exhaling as he grinds the butt out with his heel._ _

__“Littering,” Harry points out as they go back inside._ _

__“Arrest me,” Zayn says, holding out his hands, his wrists turned upward._ _

__Harry feels his face heat up as a thousand dirty images go through his brain. He’s never used handcuffs before, because he’s never known anyone he’s fucked well enough to feel as though it would be polite to ask. But it doesn’t sound like a bad prospect one day. He doesn’t say anything: he just arches an eyebrow until Zayn exhales and turns away. From what Harry can tell, he’s blushing a bit too. Good._ _

__*_ _

__The tables are named after Whitney Houston songs, and Harry and Zayn and Zayn’s family are sitting at _Didn’t We Almost Have It All?_ , which seems inauspicious. “I assume the head table’s called _I Will Always Love You_ ,” says Waliyha before trotting off to check. A moment later she comes back looking dissatisfied. “It’s called _Greatest Love Of All._ ”_ _

__“Learning to love yourself?” Doniya laughs and makes a hand gesture that makes Zayn snort beside Harry as Trisha looks aghast and says, “Stop it! Stop it! People are looking!” even though they aren’t._ _

__“What did she do?” Safaa asks, wide-eyed._ _

__“She did nothing,” Trisha says firmly._ _

__“What happened?” Yaser says, appearing from nowhere and sitting down._ _

__“Unfortunately your oldest daughter’s a dirty pervert,” Zayn says._ _

__“Just as I’d always hoped,” Yaser says. “What’s on the menu?”_ _

__“I put you down for chicken,” Trisha tells him. “And then there’s sticky toffee pudding for afters.”_ _

__“Zayn’d rather have spotted dick,” Waliyha mutters so their parents can’t hear, and Zayn immediately engages in trying to push her under the table, probably so that he can stand on her face and ensure she doesn’t say another word for the rest of the day. If that was Gemma, it’s what Harry would do. He likes this: it feels familiar, even though there’s bickering and people saying terrible things and then laughing at each other. It feels a lot like home. He could get used to this: he can imagine himself driving up to see the Maliks during the summer and curling up in Zayn’s single bed with him, and learning to stand upwind so that Zayn’s cigarette smoke doesn’t make his eyes hurt, and running the tip of his finger along the ridge of Zayn’s collarbone and paying attention to his breath every time it hitches. He likes the idea of getting to know him better: it’s that simple. He isn’t delusional – a couple of days of closeness doesn’t mean that if they got together, it’d work out. But he can’t remember the last time that he’s wanted to try this badly before._ _

__Everyone here is nice. The bride was beautiful, with brown curls hanging in perfect tangles down her back and a dress made from embroidered silk the same colour as the first snowfall. Her friends are wearing dresses in shades of coral and periwinkle blue and emerald and buttercup and amber and flamingo, dotted throughout the room like bright flowers amid the darkness of all the suits. If Harry ever gets married, he won’t wear black or navy or grey, he’ll choose something beautiful instead: a jacket that tapers at the waist, the same colour as pink lemonade and embroidered with gold and silver thread; a silk suit the shade of the merlot in his wine glass with floral patterns in deep rich blue velvet; or maybe he’ll go with vintage lace, a ruffled collar and a cravat and the smell of Victorian dust, along with rainbow-patterned socks peeking out of his shoes._ _

__“Zayn,” he says, so that only Zayn can hear him: “Do you want to get married one day? Not to me,” he adds quickly, just in case._ _

__“I didn’t think you meant to you!” Zayn grins. His eyes are sparkling and Harry loves it. “Yeah, of course I want to get married one day. I want a whole little flock of kids too. And I want a house with a big garden – and I want pets as well. A dog and a cat… maybe a snake.”_ _

__“A snake?” Harry can’t keep the horror out of his voice._ _

__“Or a lizard,” Zayn allows._ _

__“Fine, I can deal with a lizard,” Harry says. “I want one of those houses that backs onto some woods – not a thick forest or anything, just somewhere with some trees and a little brook--”_ _

__“Yeah! That sounds amazing. I want an orchard,” Zayn says. “Like, apples and pears and plums. And I want to learn how to grow vegetables. My grandad used to grow runner beans and raspberries and tomatoes. They always tasted so much better than the ones you buy in shops.”_ _

__“I want to grow my own herbs,” Harry says. “I want to learn to cook properly and to use my own herbs when I’m doing it. You know – just popping outside to get some home grown rosemary for my Sunday roast, or some mint for making mojitos.”_ _

__“That sounds so, so nice,” Zayn says. There’s a sort of aching in his voice that is one of the first things that Harry has truly recognised in him, one of the first ways that they’re the same instead of different. Under the table he finds Zayn’s hand again and grips it, rubbing his thumb over Zayn’s knuckle firmly enough to let him know that he won’t be letting go any time soon. Zayn’s studying the little menu hard, his brows furrowed, but Harry can tell that he isn’t paying attention to it properly. There are only so many times that you can read about roast chicken and halloumi skewers. When Harry looks at him there, a small oasis of quiet and stillness in this busy room, his stubborn eyes and his vulnerable mouth, the line of his neck and his throat, he feels a wave of such deep affection that it surprises him. He leans over suddenly and presses his lips against Zayn’s cheek, the other side of his face cradled in Harry’s palm. Zayn freezes for a moment and then Harry both sees and feels him smile; Zayn turns his face and they kiss a couple of times, everything else around them fading away to nothing._ _

__*_ _

__In between courses, the bride and groom make their way around the room to greet everyone. As Nina approaches their table she holds her arms out and squeals “Auntie Trisha!” so loudly that Harry almost chokes on a piece of courgette. Her new husband Carl is just behind her and although he doesn’t look like the sort of person that everyone disapproves of, Liam looks like the sort of person who would never in a million years eat a live worm on a dare and look how that turned out. Zayn’s sisters spring to their feet and shriek about how gorgeous Nina looks in her dress; Harry thinks he might be the only person who sees the way that Yaser rolls his eyes ever so slightly before pasting a smile on his face and getting to his feet. Introversion clearly runs through the male line in Zayn’s family. Carl looks slightly out of place as he smiles awkwardly at Harry and Zayn before holding out a hand to Zayn. “Hi, mate, good to see you again,” he says in a tone that implies that he’s only seen Zayn once or twice before and those occasions were fleeting at best. He looks at Harry. “And you’re his, er…”_ _

__“Yes, I’m his ‘er’,” Harry agrees with a smile._ _

__Carl goes a bit red. “His boyfriend. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”_ _

__“I know, I’m just pulling your leg.” Straight boys will be the death of him. Harry holds out his hand and Carl shakes it with a grip that’s clammier than Harry would prefer. “Beautiful day. I feel lucky to be able to share it with you,” Harry offers._ _

__Carl’s face smooths into a pleased smile. “We’re glad you’re here! Aren’t we--” He looks for Nina, but she’s too busy showing off some intricate stitching on her dress to Waliyha to pay any attention to anyone else, which is fair enough because she’ll get to see her new husband all the time after today anyway so Harry supposes it’s probably a good idea to focus on her guests instead. “Well,” Carl finishes with more than a smidgen of awkwardness, “we are.”_ _

__“Thanks,” Zayn says, looking brighter now. “We appreciate it.”_ _

__“Good.” Carl rubs his nose. It’s a bit sunburned, which makes him seem like an oversized teenager. “Anyway. See you lads on the dancefloor tonight?”_ _

__“Absolutely,” Harry says, and strikes a flamenco dancer pose. Carl laughs awkwardly like he thinks Harry’s a bit mental before backing away, and Zayn reaches out to the centre of the table where the flowers are. He grabs a rose and sticks it between Harry’s teeth and Harry narrows his eyes as sexily as he possibly can. When Zayn laughs it seems so sincere, with his nose wrinkling at the sides and his sharp eye teeth showing. Harry spits the rose into his hands before carefully threading it through Zayn’s buttonhole. “There. That looks nice.”_ _

__“Thank you.” Zayn looks down at the rose and touches its petals gently. It’s a peachy colour, with pink tinges to the edges of its petals. It looks like a sunset. “How romantic.”_ _

__“I’m very romantic,” Harry agrees as they sit down again. “You’ll find out one day.”_ _

__“Will I?”_ _

__“I hope so.” Harry gives him a hard look._ _

__Zayn presses his lips together and says, “Hmm. We’ll see.”_ _

__“We will see,” Harry says. “I’m going to sweep you off your feet.”_ _

__“Make sure you don’t drop me.”_ _

__“Never.” Dessert’s coming round now, the sticky toffee pudding in perfect white china bowls. There are jugs of custard too, electric yellow: they smell like Harry’s childhood, every Sunday afternoon after dinner, every time he went to his nan’s house when she made a roast and they’d have apple pie and custard for pudding afterwards. The pie was homemade when she was younger and sprightlier and then later cooked from frozen, too-big chunks of apple with the core still in. _It’s just as good as homemade, isn’t it,_ his nan would say, looking at everyone with worried eyes as though they were about to start shouting and tell her that she’d failed them, and they’d always tell her that it was, of course it was._ _

__Harry’s smiling slightly at the memory as he sticks his spoon into the sticky toffee pudding, heaps it with custard too. Zayn nudges him and catches his eye, raises the corner of his mouth like he’s asking 'What’s up? ' and Harry doesn’t say anything. He just looks at him and smiles a bit more and Zayn’s face softens as he smiles right back._ _

__*_ _

__The first dance is to _My Love Is Your Love_ by Whitney Houston. “What the fuck do they have against _I Will Always Love You_ , seriously?” Harry mutters into Zayn’s ear, and Zayn laughs as he relaxes back against Harry, his back against Harry’s shoulder. Harry tucks his chin into the place where Zayn’s neck and shoulder meet. Zayn took his jacket off a while ago and his skin is warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. Harry blows against his neck and watches as goose bumps form on Zayn’s skin. He can feel eyes on them and when he glances over, Trisha’s looking at them instead of at Nina and Carl swaying awkwardly in the middle of the dancefloor. She’s smiling fondly and it makes Harry feel guilty for this whole thing: for the lie, for allowing his complicated feelings to grow, for inhaling Zayn the way that he wouldn’t if he only had platonic thoughts about him. He still smells fresh and sweet and lemony but underneath that Harry can smell his skin. He wants to burrow his head into Zayn’s armpit but probably that would be creepy and inappropriate at a wedding._ _

__He contents himself with nuzzling into the side of Zayn’s neck instead. Zayn lifts a hand to touch Harry’s hair and leans back more completely, resting more of his weight against him. Around them people are getting up to dance. This is why Zayn brought him here: so that he didn’t feel alone at moments like this. Trisha and Yaser get up and make their way through the tables to the dancefloor. They hold each other with such familiarity that it makes Harry’s heart sear with jealousy. He turns his head to Zayn’s ear again and lets his lips touch his earlobe when he says, “You and me now.”_ _

__“I don’t dance,” Zayn says. “You’ve seen me.”_ _

__“Get up,” Harry says sternly. He knows that Zayn will, and he does: hand in hand they wind their way to the dancefloor in the centre of the room. Zayn’s mouth is a wry twist like he’s ready to start laughing at himself the second that Harry does. “Have you ever danced with a boy before?” Harry asks, and adds in, “Like this, I mean,” when Zayn opens his mouth to answer._ _

__“No,” Zayn admits, but his willingness to try is pulsing off him just as much as his shyness is._ _

__“Come here,” Harry says. If he’s honest, he hasn’t either. They’re young though, and it doesn’t matter that they haven’t done it before because they’re doing it now. There have been a lot of boys and a lot of girls in his life – he slow danced with his prom date at school, their hands on each other’s hips awkwardly, and he’s had a lot of sex with a lot of people. But there’s something intimate in a different way about wrapping yourself around someone else in public, and he can tell that Zayn feels the same way with his big eyes and that edge of uncertainty. Harry steps in and puts his arms around Zayn’s waist: he’s taller so it makes sense. After a second Zayn puts his arms around Harry’s neck, his fingertips dragging gently at the hair falling over the nape of Harry’s neck. It takes them a second to find the beat of the music and then they’re lost again as it makes way for another song. Zayn halts, frowns, listens, and then says “It’s my boy!”_ _

__“What?” Harry says, poised, ready and waiting to be taken along on this journey._ _

__“It’s George! You gotta have faith,” Zayn says, before peeling himself away from Harry, reaching down for his hand and lifting it so he can turn underneath it. Harry looks at his face, bright and happy, and thinks it might be one of the most marvellous things he’s ever seen._ _

__*_ _

__They drink and they dance and they drink some more. There is wine provided on the tables and beer too, and an open bar: Zayn orders JD and cokes and Harry leans in and says, “Make them doubles,” and Zayn quirks an eyebrow like he’s saying 'I like the way you think'. They suck down the drinks through double straws and make their way back to the dancefloor, where they can move together to Dua Lipa and Rihanna and Tinie Tempah even though it isn’t 2012 anymore. “What the fuck is this?” Harry shouts into Zayn’s ear, and Zayn shouts back “I got so many clothes I keep them in my aunt’s house! Been Southampton but I’ve never been to Scunthorpe! Are you really fucking complaining?” and Harry tips his head back and laughs._ _

__Harry dances with Waliyha and sneaks her a vodka and orange even though technically she’s underage. “Mum’s on the wines,” she says over the music, disapproving and affectionate at the same time, and Harry follows her gaze over to Trisha, who’s pink-cheeked and laughing uproariously with a couple of women who look a lot like her._ _

__“Are they your aunties?” Harry asks Waliyha._ _

__She shrugs a bit. “Sort of! One of them’s her cousin… we call them all ‘auntie’ though.” That makes sense: Harry nods sagely because he has plenty of relatives like that too. “How about another one of these?” she asks, waving her glass at him, and he throws a meaningful glance at Yaser on the other side of the room. She sighs heavily. “Fine. Where’s my brother anyway?”_ _

__“Smoking, probably,” Harry says. He appears to have mislaid his pretend boyfriend._ _

__“You should go and find him,” she advises him. “He gets funny at things like this. All closed up. But I’m sure you know that.”_ _

__Harry nods, because he kind of knows and he kind of doesn’t. “Yeah. I will. Thanks.”_ _

__“I think he really likes you,” Waliyha says suddenly._ _

__Harry feels his stomach drop; he doesn’t know why, whether it’s nerves or excitement or worry. “Really?”_ _

__“Yeah. He seems happy,” Waliyha says. “It’s nice.”_ _

__'Isn’t he usually happy?' Harry wants to ask, and obviously doesn’t. Zayn is a complicated person, full of knots to be untangled, but then isn’t everyone? He’s playful yet closed off, and sweet yet abrupt, but Harry knows that he’s got his own contradictions too. He loves with his whole heart but it’s mostly from a distance, he has convictions but he doesn’t like to alienate people because of them. Across the room, the doors open and Zayn comes in with his sort-of cousin Carla and a couple of lads that Harry doesn’t recognise. Smokers’ area friends, probably – Harry knows they’re easy to find. Zayn’s face is light-hearted and happy and when he looks over to find Harry’s eyes on him Harry watches as pink roses unfurl on the skin of his cheeks. He halts and the people he’s with keep walking as if Zayn was never with them to begin with. But Zayn’s eyes are still on Harry’s and his carefree smile is gone, replaced with something that’s certain and hesitant and sincere at the same time. 'I feel happy too', Harry wants to tell him._ _

__They make their way towards each other, and in the centre of the dancefloor they meet. Above them there are nets full of balloons ready to fall later in the night and around them there are people dancing and talking and laughing in a swirl of colour and movement. Harry feels as though their own bubble has been carved out in the centre of it all. He takes hold of Zayn’s hand and pulls him in closer. He smells like smoke but more than that he smells like mint. “Did you chew some gum for me?” he asks, and Zayn says with a lopsided smile, “Might have.”_ _

__“What a gentleman,” Harry says. God help him, he means it. He lets go of Zayn’s hand and puts his arms around his waist like he did before, tugging him in closer before so that their bodies are flush together. Zayn feels stiff against him, all awkward angles like he isn’t sure how to place his limbs, and then slowly he figures it out: an arm looped around Harry’s neck, their feet moving together, his cheek on Harry’s shoulder. Harry can feel the slight brush of Zayn’s exhalations against the skin of his neck and he dips his head a little to rest his cheek against the softness of Zayn’s hair. They’re probably moving too slowly for the music but that doesn’t matter: right now it’s just them, together, in the centre of the dancefloor, in the centre of the world._ _

__*_ _

__For the rest of the night they’re together. Slices of wedding cake are brought out on silver platters covered with white doilies and they stand together with paper plates flopping at the edges, holding plastic forks and champagne flutes and serviettes awkwardly. “Lemon drizzle,” Zayn says approvingly, and Harry reaches in to remove a crumb of icing from just above his mouth with the tip of his little finger. Zayn tilts his face up to let him and then says, “Thanks. All gone?”_ _

__“All gone.” Harry licks the crumb off his finger. “It’s good cake.”_ _

__“It’s a good wedding,” Zayn says._ _

__“I’m a good date,” Harry says._ _

__“Ehh,” Zayn says, and hides his smile behind a forkful of cake as Harry sucks in a breath of false outrage. “More wine? White goes well with lemon.”_ _

__“Does it?”_ _

__“I have no idea,” Zayn says, laughing. He tops up their champagne flutes and Harry downs it in one before grimacing. “Is it warm?”_ _

__“Tepid vinegar,” Harry says, and Zayn shudders after emptying his own glass down his throat. Warm cheap white wine has a very particular brand of shitness, but Harry’s willing to go with it: he likes the buzz that he’s feeling and he wants to keep it going. He isn’t exactly drunk but he has to mark out his footsteps with more certainty when he weaves between tables towards the dancefloor, and he feels more comfortable reaching out to Zayn, putting a hand on the small of his back or pressing his lips against his cheek. It feels more real than he’d anticipated and he doesn’t want to think about that too hard in case it all goes up in smoke and vanishes. “Dance again?” he asks._ _

__“Smoke,” Zayn says, patting his pocket._ _

__“I’ll come with you,” Harry says._ _

__“Yeah?” Zayn’s already moving towards the doors but he glances over his shoulder. “I won’t exhale on you.”_ _

__“It’s all right.” Outside it’s cool and damp: Harry hadn’t realised how warm it was inside, how hot and soupy the crush of moving bodies had made the air. He inhales and tips his head back. Above them the sky is inky dark and the moon is half hidden behind a cloud. “It’s nice out here,” he murmurs._ _

__“Yeah.” Harry’s expecting to hear the click of Zayn’s lighter but when he looks over at him Zayn’s just biting his bottom lip, his eyes on Harry’s face. Then he says, “Having a nice time, Styles?”_ _

__“You know what? I am. Your family’s really nice.”_ _

__“Yeah, they’re not bad.” Zayn sounds like he’s trying not to sound too pleased. It’s cute that he’s doing his best to play it cool. “It’s been a nice day. I thought…” He sighs._ _

__“You were nervous,” Harry prompts him._ _

__“Yeah, I was. Like I said, this side of my family…” Zayn lets out a breath._ _

__“Is it because…” Harry doesn’t know how to finish the sentence._ _

__“Because they’re white? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.” Zayn squints up at the sky. Harry’s eyes are acclimatising to the darkness and he can see a fence spiking up and a line of trees straggling across the sky. An occasional car roars past outside. “I don’t know. Let’s talk about something else.”_ _

__Harry’s happy to do whatever he wants. “What else do you want to talk about?”_ _

__“Anything. I don’t know,” Zayn says._ _

__Harry smiles over at him. “Tell me how glad you are that I’m here.”_ _

__“Really glad.” The corners of Zayn’s eyes crinkle. “I’m happy I’m not by myself.”_ _

__“You’d have your sisters,” Harry points out._ _

__“Yeah, and they’re great, but my family can sometimes be like… I dunno. Having you here means that my mum’s not constantly looking at me and making sure I’m all right.”_ _

__“And _are_ you all right?” Harry asks. Zayn looks all right here in the moonlight, his face pale in the dark and his shirt open at the collar. The skin at the hollow of his throat is shining with sweat from dancing and the hair at his temples is damp. But handsomeness means nothing if you aren’t happy, and Harry isn’t completely sure that Zayn is. He looks all right, though: his shoulders are loose and his mouth isn’t drawn tight the way that it was earlier. The alcohol has helped, probably, and the fact that they can go home soon, and the way that it’s all gone well. He’s happy that he seems to have helped too._ _

__“Yeah. I’m all right.” Zayn nods, leaning back against the wall, shifting his shoulders. Harry has no idea how anyone can look so comfortable leaning against bricks, but Zayn’s managing it. Zayn takes his cigarettes out then finally, flips one out of the pack and holds it between his fingers, glancing down at it before looking up sharply. “Hey, Harry?” he says._ _

__Harry’s about to say _Hey, Zayn_ , but then Zayn’s fingers are around his wrist and he’s pulling him in. “Oh,” he has time for, right before Zayn kisses him. Immediately it’s a better kiss than yesterday on the sofa. It could be the wine and it could be the darkness but no matter what it is, Zayn’s kissing like he means it, threading his hand through Harry’s hair to pull him in tight. Harry feels himself melt towards him, leaning into him and resting a hand on his chest, a finger pushed between the buttons of Zayn’s shirt to touch the smooth skin of his chest. He tastes like lemon, from the wedding cake: his lips are sweet like sugar and it’s been too long since Harry kissed anyone with a beard because the soft prickle of Zayn’s stubble combined with the softness of his lips is setting off his nerve endings in a delicious way._ _

__Beside them, the door swings open. Someone says, “Sorry, boys!” and cackles before going back inside again. The kiss ends then and Harry looks directly into Zayn’s eyes, which are a little dazed. He looks at the way Zayn rests his teeth on his bottom lip for a second before looking down at Harry’s mouth and leaning in to kiss him again, his hand on the back of Harry’s neck. Harry kisses him back to the sound of Abba blaring from inside:' Mamma mia, here we go again! My, my, how could I resist you?' A weird and unruly part of him wants to laugh because this is impossible to resist, Zayn is impossible to resist, but also: it’s _Abba_ , for Christ’s sake. He puts his arms around Zayn’s waist and presses himself in closer so that their legs are tangled. He’s half-hard inside his suit trousers and part of him wants Zayn to know about it, to know that if he wants it to, this could happen, that tonight they could happen. Zayn’s breath hitches and he bites Harry’s bottom lip and snakes a hand down his back to rest on his arse, his fingertips pressing into his flesh in a way that makes Harry want to crawl on top of him. Then he kisses across Harry’s jaw and says into his ear, “I’m gonna call a taxi.”_ _

__“Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Harry murmurs. He’s too drunk to drive for sure but he’ll figure out how to pick up his car in the morning. Zayn takes out his phone and Harry watches him scroll with shaking fingers through his contacts to find a cab company. “Yeah – yeah, taxi please – we’ll be out the front, yeah…” Harry doesn’t take in the words even though his eyes are on the shape of Zayn’s mouth. Zayn ends the call and says, “He’ll be here in five minutes.”_ _

__“Will anyone mind we’re leaving early?” Not that Harry gives a shit if they do._ _

__Zayn snorts. “They won’t notice.”_ _

__Hand in hand they wind their way through the reception room: halfway there Harry lifts his arm and Zayn twirls underneath it, miraculously exactly on the beat. They collect their jackets and Zayn nicks a bottle of wine that’s still almost full when no one’s looking. Doniya raises an eyebrow at them from a few feet away and Zayn nods towards the exit and she laughs knowingly. “She’ll tell my mum,” Zayn mutters as they make their way to the exit, his hand a death grip around Harry’s. “So they won’t think we’re dead or anything.”_ _

__“Or fucking in the toilets,” Harry says._ _

__“We could have done that if you’d mentioned it earlier,” Zayn says, and smiles wickedly when Harry pretends to be scandalised._ _

__The taxi is already waiting when they get outside, an old blue Clio that smells like sick and carpet cleaner inside. Zayn sits on the opposite side of the back seat with his elbow resting on the armrest and his chin on the heel of his hand, watching the streets pass by, golden light from the street lamps flickering on and off the planes of his face. Harry watches him and out of the corner of his eye he catches snatches of the pavements: two girls walking with linked arms and brightly coloured head scarves; a boy waiting at a bus stop with his head in his hands; a group of teenagers clustered outside a kebab shop, the sign flickering neon behind them. Harry imagines Zayn as one of them, a polystyrene container of chips and gravy in one hand and a little wooden fork in the other one, a can of Coke in his hoodie pocket. “Is it nice to be back?” he asks._ _

__Zayn’s still looking out of the window but Harry can see him smile slightly. “Yeah. My old primary school’s just down there.” He taps on the glass._ _

__“Aww. Little Zayn. Bet you were cute as fuck.”_ _

__“I’m cuter now.”_ _

__Harry pretends to appraise him. “I wouldn’t describe you as cute.”_ _

__“What would you describe me as?” Zayn finally looks at him with an arched eyebrow._ _

__“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Harry says._ _

__Zayn hums out a laugh, and then the taxi swings down a road that Harry recognises and stops outside Zayn’s house. “Let me get this,” Harry says, fishing in his jacket pocket for money. He leans awkwardly between the front seats and swats away Zayn as he offers a fiver. “No, it’s on me. Stop it. Fuck off.” It’s only eight pounds fifty anyway. “Keep the change,” he says, giving the driver a tenner._ _

__“Oooh, fancy,” Zayn says as he walks down his garden path, swaying just a little and fumbling for his keys. “'Keep the change'. You sounded like someone’s dad.”_ _

__“Shut up!” Harry says, and reaches out for Zayn’s hips, pulling him flush against him from behind. He expects more resistance than he gets and instead Zayn stumbles backwards into his arms with a laugh that cuts through the night air. The laugh turns into a gasp as Harry pulls him closer, burying his face in the side of his neck, lips and mouth and – lightly – his teeth too, grazing them just below the line of Zayn’s shirt collar. “Oh,” Zayn says, sounding as though he’s lost, lifting a hand to touch Harry’s head and to pull him in closer before breaking away. Harry feels the sharpness of loss before Zayn turns in his arms and kisses him so hard and with so much want that the only thing Harry can do is kiss him back, his hands curled around Zayn’s upper arms like he’s the only thing holding him upright._ _

__Zayn tugs a hand through Harry’s hair and pulls it a bit, which obviously goes straight to Harry’s cock because he’s nothing if not easy. He pulls back and sees the smile on Zayn’s just-kissed mouth and the way that his eyes are on Harry’s own lips. They kiss again and then again, their bodies pressed together, the rose that Harry pressed into Zayn’s buttonhole crushed between their chests. Harry wonders if anyone can see them right now, because although it’s dark they’re out in the open and the houses here are packed tight together. He doesn’t care though – he feels proud to be the person Zayn’s kissing and he hopes that Zayn feels the same way too._ _

__“We need to get inside,” Zayn mumbles before biting Harry’s bottom lip._ _

__“Mmm,” Harry says, incapable of coherence. “Yeah, we--”_ _

__“Inside,” Zayn breathes. Harry reaches inside Zayn’s jacket and slips his fingers between the buttons of his shirt just so he can feel some skin, and Zayn’s breath hitches. Then Harry moves his hand, sneaks it inside Zayn’s inside pocket, and says “Abracadabra,” before pulling out his keys._ _

__“Yer a wizard, Harry,” Zayn says, and laughs to himself before turning around again and making his way finally to the front door. Harry watches the line of his silhouette and feels a bolt of tenderness so strong that he doesn’t know how he’s still breathing._ _

__Once they’re inside they don’t bother to turn the lights on. In the darkness, lit only by the faint yellow of the streetlight through the front door window, they toe their shoes off. Harry feels younger and stupider and older and wiser than he has in years, and almost slips in his socked feet as he races upstairs after Zayn. His room is so dark and cool and the stars on the ceiling are glowing low and pale green. “Fuck,” Zayn says as he walks into one of the spaceships that’s hanging down. “My head!” He’s laughing as he rubs it._ _

__“Let me see,” Harry says, and Zayn stands still. There’s the faintest red mark on his forehead and Harry brushes his hair aside before drawing Zayn’s head down so he can press his lips against the mark for a moment. “Better?”_ _

__“Much.” Zayn’s looking down at Harry’s front and it’s only when he feels the press of his fingertips that Harry realises he’s undoing his shirt. “You’ve spent all your birthday money for the last few years on tattoos as well then?” Zayn asks, touching one of the birds on Harry’s chest._ _

__“Christmas money too,” Harry agrees. He touches Zayn’s chin and makes him look up at him. “Hey.”_ _

__“Hey,” Zayn says. “You’re fit.”_ _

__“You are too.” Harry’s smiling, he knows he’s smiling, he can feel it._ _

__“Ha.” Harry spots the crease of pleased dimples in Zayn’s cheeks before he turns away. “So. Do you want to blow this up tonight?” He presses a socked toe against the edge of Harry’s leaky inflatable mattress._ _

__Harry squints as he pretends to think about it. “I mean, I could. But if you’re okay with sharing tonight…”_ _

__“I mean, maybe. Maybe we could manage it.” Zayn’s face is still in shadow as he lets his jacket fall from his shoulders and fall into a dark pool on the floor, scattering petals as it goes. When he looks over at Harry finally, his eyes catch the light from outside and they look oddly light, the brown almost hazel. There’s something feral and uncertain in his face that makes Harry want to reach out for him. “I don’t usually…”_ _

__“Don’t usually what?” Harry sheds his jacket too, folding it over the back of Zayn’s chair._ _

__“Bring boys back here,” Zayn says._ _

__“Do you bring boys back to your uni house?” Harry asks._ _

__“Not lately,” Zayn says, and adds as an explanation: “Girlfriend.”_ _

__“Of course.” Zayn’s ex-girlfriend feels like a million miles away, even though their split is technically the reason that Harry’s here tonight. _I wonder if Zayn would rather that she was here tonight instead of me_. The thought catches Harry off guard: he’s not used to that sort of uncertainty. He pushes it firmly away and reaches for Zayn instead. They meet in the middle like magnets, mouths hard and clashing. Harry reaches down to fumble for Zayn’s belt and Zayn tugs Harry’s shirt out of his trousers, his forehead against Harry’s and their noses almost brushing. Harry lets the shirt drop and pushes Zayn backward towards the bed. He expects resistance but Zayn just goes with it until his knees hit it and he sits down. He looks so good there, white shirt and narrow waist and dark trousers and bruised mouth. Harry moves onto him, one knee either side of Zayn’s, Zayn’s hand on the back of his neck. He runs a hand up Zayn’s side, the taut curve of his waist, the piano keys of his ribs, and kisses across his mouth and his jaw and the underside of his chin. Zayn sucks in a breath and tilts his head back so that Harry can kiss his neck. He loves it: the combination of the cologne he sprayed on earlier that day and the duskier salt of his skin, dried sweat from dancing, the roughness of his stubble. Zayn’s hands are in his hair, on his neck and dancing over his back, sparks flying from his fingertips everywhere he touches._ _

__“Hey,” Zayn says and shifts back onto his elbows, his shirt falling off his shoulders, rumpled and somehow regal._ _

__“Get this shit off you,” Harry says and Zayn loses that grace as he half-sits up and wriggles so Harry can pull the shirt out from underneath him and throw it away onto the floor. Every time he loses his poise, deeper affection for him pushes through Harry’s veins. If he actually likes him, it’s going to be a disaster. He frowns by mistake and Zayn’s brow creases in response, so Harry smiles at him as brightly as possible. There’s still a question on Zayn’s face so Harry leans in to kiss it off his mouth. He touches the warm soft skin on Zayn’s stomach and the hair beneath his belly button and the nubs of his nipples, which are the prettiest shade of pink. Zayn touches him right back: tugs his hair, runs his fingers over his shoulder blades, reaches down to grip his arse, pulls his hips down so they’re grinding together and smiles triumphantly up against Harry’s mouth when he groans._ _

__The friction and pressure of it is blindingly good. Harry could do this all night, kissing and touching each other like they’re awkward sixth formers discovering boys. There’s something that’s beautiful about mapping out someone else’s body for the first time. Suddenly he remembers Niall telling him to be nice to Zayn and so he cradles Zayn’s face in his hand as he kisses him, trying to be tender and gorgeous, and managing only rough and – he hopes – warm. In his peripheral vision he can see Zayn’s bedside table, a copy of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy_ , an old clock radio, a framed quote in a language that Harry doesn’t recognise – Arabic, maybe. God, there are so many things that he wants to know, but he’ll content himself with kissing the golden hollow of Zayn’s throat, the sparse hair over his chest, hearing him make a low noise in his throat when Harry flattens his tongue over his nipple._ _

__He settles between Zayn’s legs and undoes his trousers as he says a silent thank you that suit trousers are much easier to remove than jeans. Zayn looks at him with big eyes, the light from outside rippling over his chest like they’re in a swimming pool as the sun dies on the horizon. He lifts his hips as Harry pulls his trousers off, taking his pants too, and when they reach the end of his legs Harry sticks an index finger in the top of each of Zayn’s socks to help peel them off too. A bare leg ending with a sock is good for absolutely no one. Getting the trousers off completely is awkward because Harry has cleverly situated himself directly in the way, but they laugh about it, which he likes: they laugh and he sees Zayn’s flat stomach shake with it as his head tilts back. The vulnerability of the underside of his chin, his jaw, his Adam’s apple, his earlobes: Harry melts entirely._ _

__The trousers come off, eventually, and the pants and the socks: Zayn lifts his leg and Harry catches hold of his ankle and bites the bare crescent of bone there. He kisses up the inside of Zayn’s calf and the inside of his knee, which is smooth and free from hair and sensitive as well apparently, because it makes Zayn catch his breath and curl his toes. Harry hunkers down and kisses the inside of his thigh too, nuzzles his face into the muscular flesh, biting soft and lazy. Zayn’s thumb is on his cheekbone and his fingers in his hair as though he’s blind and remembering Harry’s face by touch instead of by sight. But when Harry looks up at him his lips are parted and his pupils are blown dark and shiny. He feels as though there’s something that those dark eyes are trying to tell him but Harry isn’t there yet. They aren’t there yet. He doesn’t understand._ _

__But he does understand the desire on Zayn’s face. He understands the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He understands his tensed muscles, and he understands what want is: this is want, it’s blasting right on past worrying about the potential of this being, intellectually, a bad idea and seizing firmly onto the fact that it feels good and right. “Hey,” Zayn whispers, his touch on Harry’s face burning, his fingerprints made of fire, and Harry feels his lips curve into a smile, sincere and real, before he dips his head down again to take the head of Zayn’s cock into his mouth, his hand fisted around its base. Every time Harry finds himself with a cock in his mouth he feels as though it’s been far too long since he did it. Sucking a dick is an art which not enough people pay attention to. It’s a dance of power and control and balance. It’s intimate and gorgeous, and drawing pleasure out of another human being is a privilege that he loves._ _

__It’s also really fucking hot. He’s never understood people who think that oral sex is a chore. Going down on girls is hot as hell too: is there anything better than having your face pressed into the most intimate part of someone else’s body? Their scent and their taste on your mouth and then in your memory hours later, days later; knowing someone that well is incredible. And the way that Zayn’s hands are in his hair, the sharp sweet pain when he tugs a little too hard. Harry sucks harder and then more lightly, and he presses sloppy open-mouthed kisses to the side of Zayn’s cock before opening his mouth and letting its head slide to the back of his throat, his whole mouth full and his gag reflex straining for a moment as he breathes through his nose, heavy and hard. A muffled moan from Zayn and when Harry glances up he’s biting the side of his hand, his eyes on Harry frantic and incredulous. There are so many ways Harry would like to do this in future: Zayn’s hand fisted in his hair and fucking his mouth half-drunk in an alleyway behind a club, Harry reaching up to cover his mouth back at uni, to shut him up so that Niall won’t hear them through the thin walls of their student house and mock them mercilessly the next day. Or maybe Harry would like people to hear them, would like to feel Zayn’s hand on the base of his back in public and to be marked silently as his._ _

__“Fuck,” Zayn breathes, cracked and desperate. “Fuck.”_ _

__Harry hums around him and Zayn’s legs spread wider like he’s trying to give him more access. He arches his hips just a little, raising his arse off the bed, and Harry thinks: _Oh_._ _

__One of the things that he’s never really known how to negotiate in this life of screwing boys some of the time is whether or not other people like to top or bottom. He’s had arguments before because of it: the lad who was Louis’s teammate in the uni football club, who had an arse like two peaches and who lost his temper when Harry murmured in his ear about how much he’d like to fuck him, as if it was some sort of indication of character. Harry has never had a real preference, if he is entirely honest. He knows the kind of sex he likes: dirty and real and honest and intimate. What he’s doing during it has never played on his mind as much as the way he likes it to make him feel. He likes to give himself over entirely to whoever he’s fucking or getting fucked by. He doesn’t like to play it cool until after they’ve both come. That’s absolutely all._ _

__He’s terrible at a lot of things (woodwork, remembering to open his post, understanding what James Joyce is going on about) but one thing Harry Styles is excellent at is reading other people. And what he’s inferring from the way that Zayn’s lifting his hips is the fact that he’d like his arse to come into play somewhere here. Honestly, Harry’s more than happy to oblige. He pulls back and licks his lips, partly because he knows that Zayn’s looking at his mouth, and sits back on his heels, knees wide open. Zayn looks so good there, so fucking good: his hard cock shiny with spit against his stomach, his tongue coming out to wet his bottom lip. Harry fists his own cock because he has to, he can’t not touch himself, he has to somehow get himself under control, he has to--_ _

__And then Zayn’s shifting up, moving towards him, reaching out to wrap his own hand around Harry’s dick instead, leaning in to kiss him wet and deep and intense. His hand is firm and certain and his thumb moves over the head of Harry’s cock as Harry feels his smile stretch against his mouth. The kiss breaks and Zayn reaches for Harry’s hand. He rubs his fingertips over the lines on Harry’s palm and the creases on the insides of his fingers and then gently he folds down Harry’s fourth and fifth fingers, lowering his head to kiss Harry’s knuckles, gently one by one. Then he takes Harry’s index and middle fingers into his mouth. The pressure is intense right away and Harry feels something tightening in the pit of his stomach, a low groan making its way up involuntarily from his throat. Zayn looks into his eyes for a moment, almost mischievous, all velvety dark lashes, and Harry has a moment of thinking that he would set everything in the world on fire if it kept Zayn looking as lightheartedly happy as he does right now._ _

__When Zayn pulls back with a wet smack, Harry’s fingers are slick. Zayn’s hand is on his chest and he pushes Harry down so he’s flat on the bedclothes. His head’s half off the edge of the bed, and he makes a face before trying to wriggle further onto it. “Sorry,” Zayn says. “That was supposed to be properly sexy--”_ _

__“It was,” Harry says. “You are. Let me--”_ _

__“Let you what--?” Zayn moves with Harry’s hands and settles himself down with one knee either side of Harry’s hips._ _

__“Again,” Harry says, and presses his fingers upwards into Zayn’s mouth. The feeling of Zayn’s tongue curling around them and his hand on Harry’s wrist and the sweet pressure of Zayn on top of him is, for a moment, almost too much. It feels like even more too much when Zayn lifts his hips and Harry reaches with slick fingers behind him and then, more slowly, inside him. Zayn lets out a breath that sounds as though he’s been holding it for a while. He’s so tight and warm and Harry looks up at him, at his eyes closed in bliss and his shoulders surprisingly relaxed._ _

__He begins to curl his fingers and Zayn’s eyes snap open. “Wait,” he says, holding up a finger, and obediently Harry does. Zayn smiles, almost lazy, and says, “Good.” He shifts his hips, and says, “One more finger. And you can do it harder. I’m not going to break.”_ _

__Harry’s so hard that he feels like he’s going to explode and shatter all the windows in the house, so he has absolutely no problem with going a little faster. He does what Zayn asks, and then Zayn pinches Harry’s nipple and says, “Now you can move them,” and so Harry does. He likes this confidence: he likes that Zayn knows what he’s doing and what he wants. He knows that some lads have fantasies about subservient virgins but Harry’s never been one of them. He likes being told what to do every now and then. He likes people who take charge and who control their own pleasure. He hadn’t realised that Zayn was one of those people, and he loves that he is._ _

__The fumble for a condom is always and inevitably awkward, but tonight it isn’t so bad. Zayn rolls over to check his bedside table for them and comes up looking irritable with nothing but a bottle of lube. “Wow, you’re really intense and annoyed about not catching herpes from me,” Harry says, and Zayn laughs low and sincere, tilting his head back, and then he says, “No, but fucking seriously, Harry, do you have a fucking condom?” and Harry does, which is lucky. It’s in his wallet, which is in his jacket pocket, which is somewhere on Zayn’s dark bedroom floor._ _

__“Sorry,” Harry says, after a moment of unsuccessful fumbling, and Zayn smiles charmingly from the bed and says, “I’ve got a really nice view of your arse from here, so…”_ _

__“Yes!” Harry cheers, finding his wallet and pulling the condom out. He waves it triumphantly at Zayn as he flops back onto the bed. “Success!”_ _

__“Fucking yes,” Zayn agrees fervently. He leans in to kiss Harry as he rolls the condom down Harry’s dick with gentle, careful fingers. “Do you know how long,” he begins, and sighs a bit and presses his mouth against the corner of Harry’s. “It doesn’t matter,” he murmurs against Harry’s skin. He warms lube in his hands and smooths it over Harry’s cock, and then Harry gets the best show in the world as he reaches around to slick himself up. “What?” he says, catching the tail end of Harry’s mesmerised face._ _

__“Pretty,” Harry says, and Zayn laughs, a surprised crackle, and says, “That was the opposite of fit.”_ _

__“Very pretty,” Harry says, drawing his upper lip back and wriggling his eyebrows lasciviously in a way that he knows is intensely unattractive._ _

__“Harry! Oh my God. Why are you so shit?” Zayn asks, and leans in to kiss him, one hand on the back of Harry’s head drawing him in, kissing him over and over, kissing him down onto the sheets and catching his breath hard as he grinds down onto him. The laughter fades and Harry feels a surge of urgency, of wanting to hold and to be held, of wanting to be as close as they can possibly get. For a second their eyelashes tangle together and then Zayn presses the tip of his nose against Harry’s in a moment of sweet affection before kissing him again._ _

__When Zayn sinks down onto his cock it’s slow and gorgeous. He looks serene somehow, his collarbone gleaming silver with sweat and his eyes half-closed. He feels incredible, tight and hot and exquisite. Harry holds onto Zayn’s hips and kisses his throat as Zayn exhales a moment of discomfort away. He lets Zayn work his way through it, lets him turn his head from side to side, one hand braced on Harry’s chest and his other arm curled around his neck, holding him close. Then he turns his face and finds Harry’s and presses their cheeks together. His stubble’s scratchy and Harry likes it. He runs his fingertips gently up and down the line of Zayn’s spine and turns to press kisses onto his cheek, his chin, his jawline. He whispers “Yeah?” into Zayn’s ear and Zayn nods and murmurs “Yeah,” back._ _

__Sweat’s already burning on the back of Harry’s neck and pooling at the base of his spine. It’s summer and it’s warm outside, the air thick and heavy, and it feels like a blanket on top of them right now, but it isn’t the worst: they’re in their own bubble entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Technically Harry knows that things exist outside this moment, that there is a past and there will be a future too, that there are other people out there living their lives right now, but all he can see is Zayn’s skin and the touch of him and the burning heat of him and the scent of him and the sensation of his breath on Harry’s skin, hot and intimate, the damp of sweat on his back and the muscles beneath his skin, the hardness of his cock against Harry’s stomach, the hair on his legs against Harry’s hips, his palm still on Harry’s chest like a brake pedal. Right now its weight is feather light, which means that Harry knows he’s fine, he doesn’t need a break, that Harry can thrust into him, gentle at first and then harder._ _

__He’s so hyper aware of Zayn, more than ever before with anyone else. His breaths and the way he moans every time Harry pushes into him like he can’t help himself. Harry kisses him again and Zayn bites his lip, the pain a sharp bright flash that sends heat through Harry’s body. “You like that?” Zayn says, and does it again before digging his fingertips so hard into Harry’s back that Harry knows he’ll have bruises for days._ _

__“Yeah, and when you--” Harry gasps._ _

__“When I?” Zayn sounds out of breath._ _

__“When you pull my hair,” Harry says._ _

__“Oh.” Zayn shifts his hips in a way that makes Harry feel like he’s about to black out before raking his fingers through Harry’s hair, tugging it hard. Harry feels himself gasp and then feels Zayn’s self-satisfied smile against his own mouth. “Harder,” Zayn murmurs against Harry’s cheek then and Harry obliges, fucking up into him, feeling Zayn meet him. He curls a hand around Zayn’s cock, rubbing his thumb over the precome on its tip, enjoying the feel of it in his palm, its weight and its shape and the way that touching it makes Zayn breathe “Oh my God,” before knocking his forehead a little too hard against Harry’s and holding it there. For a moment Harry stares into his eyes, glassy and too close and blurry, and the intimacy of it makes his stomach flip with fear so he closes his eyes and tilts his head back instead, air from the cracked-open window cooling the sweat on his forehead._ _

__It doesn’t last as long as he would like it to, but that’s only because he wishes it would last forever. Zayn grips onto him, fingers pressing hard into the back of Harry’s neck, and then he hisses “Fuck,” and comes between them hard and hot over Harry’s stomach and over his hand before leaning out of breath against him, his face against the curve of Harry’s shoulder, and Harry finds himself following after, allowing the feeling to overtake him and leaning into it and riding the wave, moving faster and then that release, familiar but more intense than usual. It takes him a moment to find himself again, like an astronaut taking his first steps in a new world. Zayn is almost shaking against him and Harry reaches for him, kisses him and kisses him, his hand curved over the side of Zayn’s face._ _

__He resolutely doesn't let go until Zayn does. “We should…” Zayn begins and shifts his hips, grimacing as he lifts himself off Harry and back onto the sheets._ _

__“Yeah,” Harry says. He feels light-headed as he ties the condom off and chucks it into the bin, and his legs have almost gone to sleep. “Wow.”_ _

__There’s a lilting laugh in Zayn’s voice. “Wow?”_ _

__“Maybe,” Harry says._ _

__“You’ve said it now, you can’t take it back.” Zayn shifts, winces slightly. “I’m so disgusting right now.”_ _

__“We both are,” Harry says. He’s tired now, weary down to his bones. He doesn't want to blow up the inflatable mattress and spend a night sadly deflating onto Zayn’s bedroom carpet. He wants to graduate to the bed and to wrap themselves around each other until it’s hard to tell which limb belongs to which person. “Here you go.” He grabs a tissue and throws the box over to Zayn. Cleaning up after sex is never the most dignified thing to do. A shower wouldn't be terrible, but it would be better to wake up tomorrow with the scent of Zayn still on his skin. He throws the dirty tissue into the bin and runs his tongue over his teeth. “I need to brush these bad boys,” he says. “Back in a moment.”_ _

__“There’s a dressing gown on the…”_ _

__“Right.” It’s on the back of Zayn’s door and it’s got pictures of Bart Simpson with speech bubbles saying ‘Cowabunga Dude!’ on it, but Harry puts it on anyway because he has no shame. The rest of the house is still quiet: Zayn’s family doesn't seem to be back from the wedding yet, which is good because Harry didn't really want them to overhear him penetrating their son and brother. In the bathroom he brushes his teeth carefully, one tooth at a time, and splashes water over his face, which miraculously looks the same despite the fact he just had sex with Zayn Malik. His hair’s a total wreck and his mouth definitely looks fuller than it usually does, but otherwise he doesn't seem to have changed, which is odd because he feels as though something has._ _

__He blinks at his reflection in the mirror over Zayn’s parents’ bathroom sink for a moment longer before padding quietly back to Zayn’s room. Zayn’s standing up wearing his boxers and a tight smile but he touches Harry’s hip on the way to the bathroom, which Harry supposes is a good sign. He takes the dressing gown off and stands by the window, just enough to the side that Zayn’s neighbours won’t be able to see him and be horrified by the nude boy lounging sweatily against the window panes. He likes the feeling of the cooler air on his bare skin, and part of him, the vainest part, thinks that his naked silhouette from behind might be a nice thing for Zayn to see when he walks back into the room._ _

__As it turns out, it is. The door opens and Zayn makes a soft incredulous noise and says “You fucking exhibitionist,” as the door clicks shut again behind him._ _

__“You like it,” Harry says over his shoulder, and when he turns around again Zayn’s shaking his head ruefully as he steps out of his boxers._ _

__“No comment,” Zayn says as he gets into bed and under his covers, which are irredeemably rumpled at this point. He’s on his side and leaning the side of his face on his elbow when he looks up at Harry with wide eyes - Harry’s absolutely not the only determinedly coquettish person here - and says, “Coming to bed?”_ _

__Harry folds himself into the sheets beside Zayn, who’s so warm and who presses himself up against Harry right away. They kiss again, slower now, more like a hobby than a race, something to enjoy and to savour rather than a means of getting somewhere else. Harry’s tired and he can feel that Zayn is too from the slowness of him, the way that he touches Harry’s back with his knuckles softly. Below them finally the front door open and Harry hears a bubble of laughter from one of Zayn’s sisters, chatter, the landing light flipping on so that golden light pools beneath Zayn’s bedroom door and into his room. “Ignore them,” Zayn murmurs, kneading Harry’s spine gently and leaning in to kiss him again, and so Harry does._ _

__*_ _

__Harry wakes up early the next morning, earlier than he’d intended to anyway. Zayn’s still asleep beside him, his breath a low, constant buzz. Some people look younger when they’re asleep but he isn’t one of them: there’s stubble covering his jaw and in the dim light Harry can see pale shadows blooming under his eyes, a delicate watercolour wash of pale blue and lilac. God, Harry likes his face. He kisses Zayn’s cheekbone and his forehead and the tip of his nose and Zayn wakes with a sharp exhale and a frown. “I - oh,” he says, and stretches out to put an arm around Harry’s neck, pulling him in closer. “Good morning,” he says, turning his face back into his pillow and closing his eyes again. “My head hurts.”_ _

__“Are you hungover?”_ _

__“I need some water.” Zayn lets go of Harry and rolls onto his back and sticks out his tongue, his eyes still shut. “My breath is very bad right now.”_ _

__Harry can’t smell anything. “I’m sure it isn’t.”_ _

__Zayn opens his eyes and reaches out to tickle the side of Harry’s neck with his index finger. “You have to say that to someone you just had sex with.”_ _

__“True.” Harry turns his head quickly and grabs Zayn’s finger between his teeth._ _

__Zayn laughs, his chest rising up off the bed, and it makes Harry’s heart swell. “All right, Styles. Out of my way. I need a piss.”_ _

__“Romantic,” Harry says. Half their bodies are stuck together with dried sweat and lube and probably more disgusting substances, and there’s an incredibly unattractive peeling sound as they separate. Zayn winces as he climbs out of bed before grabbing his towel, pulling on some tracksuit bottoms and leaving the room with a small smile over his shoulder. Harry stares at the ceiling and feels an incredulous smile spreading over his face. His heart feels full of joy, the same way that he felt right after his first kiss and right after losing his virginity. Last night was clearly a first too but he hasn’t figured out what exact first it was yet. But no matter what, it was incredible. He turns his face into the hollow where Zayn’s head was and smells it before shifting over into the warmth where Zayn was sleeping. _I like him. I like him. I like him, I really do._ He can’t bring himself to be afraid of it._ _

__Once they’re both freshly showered, they troop downstairs. Safaa is making something with Lego on the kitchen table and Doniya and Waliyha are watching Friends in the sitting room and Trisha’s having a loud and gossipy conversation on the phone just outside the back door. “Buzz off, squirt,” Zayn says to Safaa with a smile, and she rolls her eyes good-naturedly before going to squeeze onto the sofa with her sisters. Zayn makes Harry tea and toast with a flourish and hands him marmalade and butter. “There’s cereal too,” he says, and sits down next to him._ _

__“Is that Slytherin on your t-shirt?” Harry asks, reaching out to press his knee against Zayn’s. “I would have pegged you as a Ravenclaw.”_ _

__“Do you like Harry Potter?” Zayn looks delighted._ _

__“Of course.” Not particularly, but that doesn’t matter. “Aren’t Slytherins the evil ones?”_ _

__“Absolutely not,” Zayn says. Harry can tell that he’s on the verge of a lecture but he sort of likes it, so he just sits back to listen. “Slytherin is the house of ambition and determination. They’re like the best mix of the other houses. You’ve got to be clever to get what you want, and they’re hard-working to achieve their goals, and they’re rebellious and brave too. Plus,” he adds, as if he’s had to defend this too many times before, “JK Rowling said that it’s about choice. And I choose Slytherin. What? Why are you smiling?”_ _

__“You’re passionate. It’s nice,” Harry says. “And you’re right too. What house do you think I am?”_ _

__“You can be a Slytherin too,” Zayn says, as if he’s extending a big privilege._ _

__“Thanks, I think.” Harry starts to nibble the crusts off his toast._ _

__“You can Slyther-into my bed.” Zayn gives him a huge stupid wink and Harry finds himself laughing._ _

__“Too much information!” Trisha shakes her head as she makes her way into the kitchen from outside. “You boys made an early exit last night.”_ _

__“Too many people,” Zayn says, and Harry nods._ _

__“You didn’t miss too much,” Trisha says. “Did you have a good evening? Was everyone nice to you, Harry? I know my side of the family can be a bit--”_ _

__“It was good,” Zayn interrupts. He presses his knee harder against Harry’s under the table. “We had a great time.”_ _

__“We did,” Harry says. “Everyone was lovely.” He can’t resist adding: “Especially Zayn.”_ _

__“Shut up,” Zayn says, looking pink and pleased._ _

__“Make me,” Harry says, and raises an eyebrow meaningfully. Zayn almost chokes on his toast, which is gratifying. Once they’ve consumed plenty of carbohydrates it’s time to go, but first it’s time for Trisha to envelop Harry in a hug that’s surprisingly all-encompassing considering the fact that she’s about a foot shorter than he is._ _

__“It’s been so lovely to meet you,” she says, looking so earnestly into his eyes that he feels sick with guilt about lying to her. “Promise you’ll come back over the summer?”_ _

__“Mum,” Zayn says weakly._ _

__“I promise,” Harry says, because it doesn’t feel as though there’s anything else that he really can say. 'I want to see you again. I hope I’ll see you again. I’ve been lying to you, and so has your son, but we had a really incredible night and maybe that means I’ll see you again.' He smiles at Zayn’s mum and says, “Thanks so much for being such an incredible host.”_ _

__She makes a dismissive noise. “‘Host’? Don’t be silly. I want you to think of us as family.”_ _

__Harry would like that so, so much. He smiles, feeling a little bit sad because everything is drawing to an end, and says, “Thank you for being so kind to me.”_ _

__Trisha draws him in for another hug and whispers in his ear, “We’re looking forward to seeing you again soon,” as she squeezes his arm._ _

__In the living room Zayn’s sisters wave from the sofas. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks,” Zayn says, shifting his backpack on as Safaa leaps up and dashes over to fling her arms around him. He pats her hair, looking bewildered and happy at the same time, and says, “You know you can Facetime me whenever you want, Saf.”_ _

__“I know, but it’s always too long,” Safaa says into his chest._ _

__“It’s all right,” Doniya says from the sofa, “once he’s been home for a few days this summer we’ll be wishing he was still at uni, right?” She throws an affectionate smile at Zayn and Safaa chokes out a teary laugh before disentangling herself and rubbing the heels of her hands over her eyes._ _

__Yaser appears then and in a moment he’s managing to gently separate Harry and Zayn from everyone else to shepherd them out of the front door. Harry turns to wave over his shoulder and feels warm at the smiling faces looking back at him before finding Zayn’s hand as they walk down the front path together. “I’ll give you a lift to your car,” Yaser says, his keys in his hand. Harry slides into the back seat, his holdall and his suit bag beside him. He can see the back of Zayn’s neck: there’s a tattoo edging up from inside his shirt and Harry wishes that he’d looked properly at it last night, traced its lines with his fingertips. He and his dad have similar profiles: strong chins and dark brows, although Yaser’s hair is peppered with silver. Harry wonders what Zayn will look like at that age, whether Harry will get to find out. He supposes that Facebook will probably have closed down way before then, or taken over the world, one or the other. Either way he probably won’t be able to do a bit of casual stalking to see how fit Zayn is when they’re both forty. They could stay in contact, maybe. Envisioning a future with someone is something that Harry has never contemplated before, and it seems so stupid after a day and a night together…_ _

__And yet. He rests his chin on his hand and looks out of the car window. In the front seat Zayn and Yaser are talking, their voices a low and comforting hum. Harry could be a part of this, if Zayn wanted. This could be his city too. This could be his family. His mind’s racing like stones skipping over the surface of a lake, jumping from thought to breathless thought. It doesn’t have to be frightening, commitment can just be a day by day thing: he could just spend each day treating Zayn well and making him smile and that could be it, and Zayn would throw him those teasing smiles and touch his hair with gentle hands and they’d sing along to music in the car like they did on the way to the wedding yesterday. They’d have a life that would be even more intimate than the time they spent in bed last night: Harry would know what Zayn sounds like when he’s singing in the shower, and the specific puffiness of his face when he’s got a cold, and how he likes his coffee when he’s not pretending that he likes it black. Harry would know all of the details that make up a life--_ _

__All of a sudden, they’re there, and Harry blinks himself back into the real world. Yaser hugs him goodbye and kisses the side of his head, which means that Zayn probably got his emotionally healthy approach to masculinity from him. He tells Harry how nice it was to meet him, and Harry rummages for his car keys, which are typically at the bottom of his bag. Yaser doesn’t wait until they’ve driven off to leave - he just waves and heads back to the car and Zayn watches him go with a fond smile. “My dad’s great,” he says almost to himself as they put their things into the boot of Harry’s car, and Harry offers, “He reminds me a lot of you.”_ _

__“Oh God.” Zayn makes a face as he moves round to the passenger door. “Does that mean you think he’s fit?”_ _

__“How dare you,” Harry says. “But also, yes.”_ _

__Zayn makes a horrified noise as he gets into the car. “I hate you.”_ _

__“You’re fitter.” Harry grins across at him from the driver’s seat._ _

__“Sweet talk gets you nowhere,” Zayn says. His smile’s so beautiful that it could sink ships. “Vamos, Styles.”_ _

__Zayn hooks up his phone to the stereo, and chooses a playlist that’s full of sleek, gorgeous songs, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. “Is this the sort of stuff you usually listen to?” Harry asks him after fifteen minutes, and Zayn laughs and says, “You’re great, Harry, but I get the feeling you’re a bit more noughties indie than nineties r’n’b so I thought I’d play it safe,” which is actually a fair comment. After another ten minutes Zayn grabs his phone and mutters “We need some more bangers,” before starting to scroll frantically. When he finally selects a song he looks over at Harry expectantly. The first few bars are joyous and buoyant but Harry doesn’t recognise them. But then the vocals come in, staccato and sexy, and Harry says, “Is this George Michael again?”_ _

__“The one and only.” Harry can hear a grin in Zayn’s voice. “Freedom.”_ _

__*_ _

__Halfway back to Manchester they stop at a petrol station. The song is still ricocheting around in Harry’s head. _Freedom: it’s the one good thing that I’ve got._ Being in a relationship would take away his freedom. Falling in love would make him so in thrall to someone else that he would be stupid, probably. He fills the petrol tank with his mind thoroughly elsewhere, and on the other side of the car Zayn hops out, phone clamped to the side of his head as he lopes away to the scrubby bit of pavement just outside the petrol station shop. He throws a look over his shoulder at Harry but it isn’t much or remotely enough. Harry shakes off the pump and leans against the side of the car, watching Zayn talk. His shoulders are hunched and he looks thin, which is odd because last night he felt solid and broad. He’s pale too, in the grey light streaming down from the sky. It looks like it’s going to rain. _ _

__Harry leans against the side of his car. _Freedom_. He loves his freedom to do whatever he likes. He loves kissing whoever he wants to kiss, boys and girls and people who identify as both or neither. He loves possibilities and not being tied down. He loves drifting in and out of people’s lives and being able to vanish whenever he wants. In the cold light of day, last night feels like a dream, and it’s hard to believe that a few hours ago he and Zayn were so close. The thought of nailing down a future for himself at twenty is too much, he’s too young. If he falls in love, it’ll only end and he’ll be heartbroken. He’s never been heartbroken before and he isn’t sure that he’ll ever have time for it._ _

__He goes inside to pay for the petrol and when he comes out Zayn’s moved a few feet away from the door. “You almost done?” Harry mouths at him and Zayn shakes his head irritably like he’s trying to get Harry to shut up and go away._ _

__Harry doesn’t. His mum always said that his stubborn streak was a mile long. Instead he pops open the packet of Quavers he bought and starts eating them slowly, letting each one dissolve on his tongue and shamelessly listening to Zayn’s hissed conversation. There are a few things that he gains from the conversation: that the person on the other end is being annoying, that they’ve phoned from a different time zone, and that they have enough power over Zayn that his voice sounds tight and upset and he’s starting to hunch over, his spare arm folded tightly across his chest._ _

__Falling for a boy who’s still upset about someone else would be absolutely ridiculous._ _

__Harry crosses over and gets back into his car. Zayn raises a finger to tell him that he’ll only be a minute and Harry stares at him as inscrutably as possible._ _

__“That seemed a bit intense,” Harry says when Zayn gets back into the car, not waiting until Zayn’s got his seatbelt on before he pulls away._ _

__“Erm, slightly.” Zayn drops his phone on the floor and then his wallet and then he bangs his head on the dashboard as he picks them up again. “Ouch. It was my ex-girlfriend.”_ _

__“Yeah?” Harry keeps his eyes on the road._ _

__“Yeah. I think she woke up in the middle of the night and she was still a bit tipsy from the night before.” Zayn lets out a breath._ _

__“Oh dear,” Harry says._ _

__“Yeah.” Harry can feel Zayn looking sideways at him. “It wasn’t a big deal though.”_ _

__“I know,” Harry says, although he doesn’t know. He feels like he shouldn’t care. He’s had plenty of one night stands before. Some of them were going out with other people at the time, some of them had recently been through break-ups, some of them were people whose names he couldn’t remember now even if he had a gun to his head. At the end of first year, he was queuing in the supermarket with Louis and only realised that the lad behind them was giving them odd looks for a reason when Louis said “I can’t believe you slept with him!” too loudly on the way out. In Harry’s defence, it was dark when they met and when they fucked, and it wasn’t dark when Louis caught the bloke making his way furtively out of the front door the next morning._ _

__“Right.” Zayn’s still looking at him, which is annoying, and then out of the corner of his eye Harry sees him shrug. Then Zayn plugs his phone into the stereo again and puts Blur on, like a peace offering._ _

__*_ _

__It’s an hour and a half before they get back, because the traffic was bullshit. In turn Harry got stressed out and Zayn got tense and white-knuckled and they ended up not talking very much. It’s fine. It’s slightly awkward when Harry drops him off at his house, but it’s fine. Harry gets out of the car to help him open the boot to get his stuff out, and then they stand together in the road frowning at each other. Something has changed, but Harry doesn’t know what. Maybe Bradford cast a spell over them and the fairy dust has faded and worn off. Zayn is clearly still into his ex-girlfriend, and Harry likes the freedom of being by himself. There are months and months until the start of next term anyway, they’d never see each other - and after third year they’ll both graduate and they’ll be going off into the world. Louis and Eleanor are already worrying about it. Harry’s got enough on his plate already without having to stress about having a boyfriend he has to figure out how to stay together with. He’s got _Ulysses_ to attempt to understand and a whole box set of Almodóvar films to watch and a law degree to pretend to care about. _ _

__Harry opens his mouth but Zayn beats him to the punch. “I’ll see you then?” he says._ _

__“Sure,” Harry says. “I’ll text you.”_ _

__“Yeah. We’ll - I dunno.” Zayn blows out a breath, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Niall will--”_ _

__“Yeah.” Harry doesn’t know what Niall’s going to do. Make them hang out again at some point, probably, because Niall loves to be sociable and make his different groups of friends meet each other. It’s terrible, and it’ll be awkward, and people will realise that he and Zayn have had sex, and everyone will make fun of him for having sex with all of their friends, like they always do. “So yeah, see you.”_ _

__“Right.” Zayn fumbles for his keys and it reminds Harry for a painful moment of the previous night, stumbling up the garden path, wrapping his arms around Zayn’s waist from behind, the scent of him, the warmth of him, slipping his fingers between his shirt buttons. It’s hard to believe it’s the same person standing in front of Harry right now. Zayn’s still in the middle of opening his front door when Harry pulls away and starts to drive back home._ _

__*_ _

__When Niall asks how the wedding was, Harry shrugs a shoulder and says, “Fine.” Niall seems to take him at his word, just nods and gets the milk out of the fridge so he can make them cups of tea. He talks about how nice Zayn’s family is and Harry’s throat tightens. It’s true: they were so nice, and he lied to them, and now he’ll probably never see them again. Zayn will tell them a story about how they broke up and they’ll think he’s a horrible person. Hopefully Zayn won’t say anything too terrible: Harry trusts him enough for that._ _

__The next few days are relatively interesting. Everyone’s exams are over and results aren’t in yet so nobody’s despairing and talking dolefully about having to do resits. At uni there’s a summer barbecue and club nights and a mini arts festival, which Harry allows himself to get caught up in. He goes to watch one of Niall’s bands performing and sits through the interminably long play that Louis is doing the lighting for and gives Liam a tenner towards his sponsored dance-off. Eleanor organises a fashion show in aid of Breast Cancer Awareness and guilt-trips him into walking down the catwalk wearing an ill-fitting waistcoat from Topman and some brogues that look like something even his dad would turn his nose up at. Two days before he’s set to drive home he starts to clear out some of the debris from the last year: the tangle of sheets under his bed that he spilled an entire bottle of rosé over and never bothered to wash, the novelty Tarzan costume that he bought for Sophia’s birthday party and that fell off him halfway through, the half-melted mug that in hindsight he probably shouldn’t have put in the microwave. He feels disconcerted and odd, as though something crucial has changed. He knows that it’s got something to do with Zayn but it’s hard to work out what exactly has happened. Seeing himself in a different light is always going to take a while to get used to._ _

__He throws away his wastepaper bin - Louis used it to be sick in during the night that he downed two pints of Baileys, and even though he rinsed it out, Harry will never look at it in the same way again - and the pair of trainers that Niall borrowed and wore for an entire weekend without socks. The smell will never come out: Harry has resigned himself to that fact. Beside his bed there’s a pile of library books that he needs to return, from the last essay of the year that he handed in three weeks ago. He heaves a sigh at them and puts them in a reusable shopping bag and goes to the library. It’s warm outside, but in a clammy way: the clouds are low and dark and Harry can tell that it’s going to rain soon. He puts his umbrella in his bag because he has no wish to look like a drowned rat and to get mocked mercilessly by Louis when he gets home._ _

__Two days until he goes home. A week and two days until he goes on holiday with his mum and Robin, without Gemma for the first time. Lying by a pool in Lanzarote would sound nice if there was someone to spend time with who wasn’t over forty. He knows that he shouldn’t complain but he’d like to anyway. And it’s a month exactly until he starts his internship at his dad’s friend’s law firm. It’s a small place so it won’t be too commercial or stressful but it still makes his stomach sink with dread every time he contemplates it. The future is too big for him to get a proper handle on. The books in his bag are so heavy that his shoulders are aching by the time that he gets to the library. He returns them at the self-service machine and slips them into the returns slot with a satisfying thump. No matter what else happens in his life, at least he’ll never have to sit through another contract law lecture._ _

__The library is dead silent, which makes sense because for undergraduates everything is over. There are some people with laptops and frowns who he assumes are postgraduates: maybe he’ll study forever, like them, so he never has to make up his mind about what to do with his life. He wanders through to the poetry section and strokes the spines of Blake and Coleridge and Wordsworth. What was it that Zayn said that he liked about Wordsworth? The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Harry remembers the way that his heart felt as though it was crushed in a vice whenever he looked at Zayn. He opens a Wordsworth collection on a random page, to a poem called Tintern Abbey. God, it’s long. He reads it slowly, and finds only snippets of understanding. Seeing beautiful things and taking the memories of them with you so that you can brighten up less beautiful days: that makes sense. 'That best portion of a good man's life, / His little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love'. Harry reads those words twice over and then once more, to cement them in his mind. It seems like something he should remember and take with him. The best parts of life are the smallest parts. They don’t have to be a big deal. If he wants to be a good person - and he does, fuck, he absolutely does - the smallest acts of kindness and love will be the most important things that he does. Not everything has to be a statement. Not everything that has value has to be forever._ _

__He’s still turning the words over in his head as he slides the book back in place on the shelf and moves to the end of the aisle and turns left. There are some beanbags there, in tacky, bright colours, and nestled in the purple one, his head firmly in a book, is Zayn. Harry stares at him, standing stock still. He doesn’t know if he should run away or go to say hello or just wave and hope that something happens. In the end he doesn’t have to make a decision because Zayn looks up sharply, his scowl fading into something that Harry can’t interpret once their eyes meet._ _

__“Hello there,” Harry says, trying to sound jovial and probably failing._ _

__“Hi. How long have you been there?” Zayn asks._ _

__“About half an hour.”_ _

__Zayn raises an eyebrow._ _

__“Ten seconds,” Harry admits. “What are you reading?”_ _

__Zayn lifts up his book to show Harry the cover. “Beloved.”_ _

__“I’ve never read any Toni Morrison,” Harry says._ _

__“Me neither.” Zayn puts the book down carefully before rubbing his eyes. “I just thought I’d get a move on with next year’s reading list.”_ _

__“What a nerd,” Harry says. Although he means it to sound affectionate, the words come out harder than he thought, and there’s a slight tremor around Zayn’s eyes as he looks down at the book again, picking it up, smoothing his fingers over its battered cover. “Anyway.” He feels as though he’s on the side of a mountain and struggling to find his footing. “Have a good summer, yeah?”_ _

__“Yeah.” Zayn looks back at him for a second, and Harry realises suddenly that he’s starting to understand his face: there’s uncertainty, defensiveness, vulnerability there. He smiles a bit and Zayn looks away. Outside the wedding that night Zayn was beautiful, golden, carved by the gods. Outside his house the next morning he was pale and shadowed and hungover. Right now he’s somewhere in between: painstakingly, specifically normal. Good-looking - Harry’s not blind - but normal. Unspectacular. Jeans with faded knees and a white t-shirt with a moth-hole in the shoulder and battered red Converse that have seen better days. He’s nothing special and Harry’s drawn to him anyway, he wants to run the pad of his thumb over Zayn’s cheekbone and press his nose into his hair. There are so many normal days between the beautiful ones: Harry needs to get used to that. He’s starting to realise now. Nameless and unremembered acts of kindness and of love: those are the ones that matter._ _

__He opens his mouth, although he doesn’t know what to say, but Zayn has resolutely opened his book again and is staring down at the words even though Harry can tell he isn’t really reading. He huffs out a breath and turns around. Maybe he’s lost this one. It’ll have to be all right. He’s got his freedom, his friends, his family - but there’s more. There could be more._ _

__He turns to face Zayn again, and reaches into his shopping bag to pull out his umbrella. And then, very deliberately, he places it onto a desk before walking away._ _

__That story they made up together, right before they kissed for the first time: Harry’s going to give it a chance to come true._ _

__He doesn’t look back as he walks out, winding between the stacks, trotting down the stairs, tapping himself out with his key card. He hovers in the lobby because it’s raining outside now, the air sticky and damp, and then he steels himself and pushes out of the front doors. The air smells like greyness, metallic and coarse, like a bucket of rainwater carpeted with moss, like slug trails down a garden path, like cold air on warm skin. Harry pushes his hands into his pockets and stands in the rain opposite the library and he waits, his eyes on the doors. There’s a flicker of movement and he feels as though his heart’s expanding painfully inside his chest. It’s too good to be true--_ _

__And then it isn’t. It isn’t too good to be true because there’s Zayn there, Harry’s closed umbrella in his hand, shoulders hunched against the rain as he peers around. Harry raises a hand and Zayn finally sees him. He looks both ways before dashing across the road - smart lad - and then he’s standing next to Harry, a smile dancing on his lips, his eyes sparkling. “You forgot something,” he says, pushing the umbrella into Harry’s hands._ _

__“So I did.” Harry leans away a little so that he can open it. “Can you believe it’s raining in the summer?”_ _

__Zayn huddles closer so that they’re both under the umbrella. “Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed.”_ _

__“We said that was my line!” Harry nudges him in the ribs._ _

__Zayn laughs, bright and happy. “Ow! I’m sorry.”_ _

__“You’re not. But fine: you can have it,” Harry concedes._ _

__“Thank you.” Zayn’s quiet for a moment. “You didn’t text me.”_ _

__“You didn’t text me either,” Harry points out._ _

__“But you said you would,” Zayn points out, which is unfortunate because it’s true. “I was - I was worried that you’d think--” He falls silent._ _

__Harry remembers the blank-eyed, panicked way that Zayn surveyed a room full of people at the wedding and feels instantly guilty. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have done what I said. I just thought - your ex called you, and she was the one who was supposed to be there in the first place.”_ _

__Zayn’s looking at him like he’s mental, which is fair enough. “Harry, she’s in New York. And she was drunk. And we _broke up_.”_ _

__Harry just has to ask one thing. “Did you wish that she was there with you?”_ _

__“No,” Zayn says immediately, and Harry believes him. “I didn’t. Not even once. Except for with my parents - I didn’t like lying to them.”_ _

__“Next time I come to see you,” Harry says, huddling closer, because the umbrella isn’t very big and his shoulder is getting rained on, “next time, it could be true.”_ _

__“All right.” Zayn’s eyes are on his face, steady and thoughtful. “Let’s give it a whirl.”_ _

__“I like you,” Harry says quickly, because he doesn’t feel like this very often and he should make the most of it. “I like making you smile. And you make me laugh. And I loved your family, and I loved how much you love them and how much they love you. And I love that you’re interested in things, and I love that--”_ _

__“You don’t have to say all that!” Zayn’s going red. “You don’t have to--”_ _

__“Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” Harry says gently._ _

__Zayn’s smile makes Harry like him so much that it’s a physical ache inside his chest. “Right,” he says. “You remembered.”_ _

__Harry doesn’t remember the last time he was so interested in another person. He wants to know what Zayn thinks and to consider his opinions and to have endless conversations with him. He shrugs, helplessly, and says, “I listened to you.”_ _

__“Yeah. I guess you did.” Zayn suddenly shivers and presses himself closer to Harry. “Isn’t this the part where you walk me home?”_ _

__“And then you make me a cup of tea,” Harry agrees._ _

__“And then you kiss me,” Zayn says._ _

__“We didn’t talk about that part before,” Harry says. He’s so happy that his face hurts._ _

__Zayn smiles up at him, and leans against his side. “I know. But we only talked about the beginning. We’ve got a lot more to go.”_ _

__The rain is starting to ease off, but as they walk back to Zayn’s flat through shining silver streets they keep the umbrella up anyway. Harry balances it between them and Zayn slips an arm around his waist to hold him close and tight. Harry hopes, irrationally, that it rains forever and ever. He feels as though he’s walking through a dream. This is their love story. This is where it begins._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I would love it if you left me a comment or came over to say hi on [tumblr](http://flomps.tumblr.com/) :)


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